MDAC First Listen (part 00110100)

[busb]

Not feeling much Christmas cheer here I'm afraid, under too much pressure (ultimately self inflicted) to get the projects completed - but I promise myself that next year it will be different. I just feel bad for dearest Renata - why she puts up with me I'll never know!

February the 4th is a big date for us - as some might know we have been having "personal" problems with the village Mayor (Female) on the account that Renata's sister has been having an affair with the Mayors husband for the last 25 years (since she was 15!!!) - and he's much older...

Needless to say the Mayor has been abusing her position of power to persecute the innocent members of the family... (some would say understandably) - but I'm very proud of Renata as she has stood up against this authoritative abuse of power and instigated the local opposition cancellers to resign which has forced a re-election on February the 4th! Anyone who has met Renata will tell you she's the kindest and gentlest person you could ever wish to meet, and its not in her nature to take such a position.

The Mayor has been in power since the village separated from the local town and the local opposition has become disillusioned over time, ineffective and disorganised - so through Renata's instigation they have become far more professional... So Feb 4th is our best chance in years to change the current climate.... the hardest part it to get people to care about local government... Renata's on the election bill, but due to her Master studys does not want a senior position, although almost everyone we meet says she should become Mayor!

Still, atleast it keeps Renata busy while I beaver away here and puts some "excitement" into our lives - not sure it its the best kind... but what can one do under the circumstances ...

Wow - hope it gets sorted for both of you! I'm hoping 2017 ends up being a little less interesting than 2016.

 

[JohnW]

Hi John, just to clarify, if I want an M-DAC 2, and later an F-DAC, will my current F-DAC development costs cover both? Or will I need two sets of devopment costs, one for the M-DAC followed by the existing one for the F-DAC?

Thanks, and apologies for the rather simple question.

Steve,

For VFET/FDAC owners they get a chance to purchase the MDAC2 "At Cost" - without affecting there FDAC development installments.

For everyone else you can transferee the FDAC development sponsorship to MDAC2 (not forgetting that Toy / Fusion owners have a GBP300 "Credit").

MDAC2 owners then qualify for a 50% discount on the FDAC development fees - ideally I'd prefer no MDAC2 to FDAC development fee's but I've invested so much financially and time wise into the development that I can never see myself recovering these costs - but then I guess I never really intended to.

If there are brisk sales of the Detox and MDAC2 (which at the moment is unlikely as we have no plans to market them and we are not setup to handle such custom), then I'd rather offer the FDAC to MDAC2 owners (from the original PFM sponsors) without the 50% development fee...

 

[Stunsworth]

John, many thanks for the clarification.

 

[JohnW]

Wow - hope it gets sorted for both of you! I'm hoping 2017 ends up being a little less interesting than 2016.

Well Yes and No having MDAC2 / FDAC / VFET and a couple of other smaller designs out will result in far more excitement by next years end "we" hope

 

[stephengrenfell]

..the retrofit MDAC2 front panel with touch Panel display.

Hi John,

Does this mean there is another option (in addition to the options mentioned here http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showpost.php?p=3001585&postcount=126) to change the original MDAC front panel and display to FDAC style touch Panel display ?.

My MDAC seems to have a faulty volume control (very stiff and doesn’t rotate) and rather useless. I had a quick peek inside and it looks a bit of a job to dismantle the front panel to replace it – not to mention where I might find a new volume control pot (unless you have any suggestions ?).

So…. will the MDAC2 touch Panel display option include the a new front panel PCB and volume control / buttons , or just the display module part ?.

Seasons greetings to the Lakewest team, and all on the forum.

Thanks.

 

[JohnW]

Stephen,

Once time allows after MDAC2 / FDAC / VFET we will release a front panel update kit that can be "DIY" retro-fitted by MDAC2 owners with Colour Touch panel display complete with new "Volume Knob" - this option will be driven by the CM3 module (Stg 2) so Stg2 needs to be also installed in the MDAC2.

 

[BrianPK]

Hi John,
I'm unclear how the different stages of MDAC2 rollout will happen in my case.
I'm only interested in the best possible SQ when playing my cds and tuner.. . No interest now in streaming or anything else.
When stage 1 is ready for shipping, do I receive it and self install and then wait to receive stage 3 (ADC I presume for my tuner?) later on from you and further self install or do I have to wait until you have developed stage 3 and only then receive everything together for a once off self install?

Hope I'm not completely confusing you.

 

[jirij]

I believe that the CM3 will make a nice "streamer" solution for MDAC2 - lets see how it goes, ideally I'd like to use CM3 on FDAC, its a shame about the shared HDMI / RGB LCD interface and peripheral USB Host port...

It seems that you can use the LCD *and* HDMI simultaneously, http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/anholt/1658250/1302/1302_900.jpg , at least on RPi3. Digging around, they seem to use two separate framebuffers, so it could work - can't tell for sure, though.

 

[gints]

For Detox, I think it makes sense to provide the external "Wall Wart" PSU separately (this also eases stock management (EU / UK / US versions) & production orders).

When the Detox is used with the MDAC2 its best powered via the dedicated 9V output on the VR PSU so no need for the extra cost of the Wall Wart PSU.

Will Detox works from 9v battery as well?

 

[timola]

This was posted in the thread on the SOTM SMS 200 .... Is there any light cast on the wall-wart PSU planned for the Detox?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV-FvRF9KGA

 

[JohnW]

When stage 1 is ready for shipping, do I receive it and self install and then wait to receive stage 3 (ADC I presume for my tuner?) later on from you and further self install or do I have to wait until you have developed stage 3 and only then receive everything together for a once off self install?

Brian,

The plan is to ship out the MDAC2 in Stage1 form, and once the ADC is ready then we can then ship out the ADC PCB for "Diy" installation - or you can return your MDAC2 back here to Czech and we will install and test.

 

[JohnW]

It seems that you can use the LCD *and* HDMI simultaneously, http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/anholt/1658250/1302/1302_900.jpg , at least on RPi3. Digging around, they seem to use two separate framebuffers, so it could work - can't tell for sure, though.

Thats good news - from what I understand the displays are not really independent, but we can "zoom" or effectively "Picture in Picture" an area of the larger display for the smaller 480x800 display on the front of the FDAC.

A couple of points to note:- the FDAC LCD is arrange 480x800 not 800x480 as would be more convenient - not sure if we can somehow reformat the display frame buffer memory to reorientate the FDAC LCD display to match the HDMI monitor output...

Also, if we have two framebuffers, I wonder if we can just "freeze" the front panel display with the UI touch panel controls statically displayed and then have the "working image" sent to the external monitor in "Dual Monitor" mode...

 

[JohnW]

Will Detox works from 9v battery as well?

Possible, but the Detox is power hungry - around 250mA not factoring any external "DAC" load.

With the MDAC2 VR PSU there is no need to consider a battery PSU.

 

[JohnW]

This was posted in the thread on the SOTM SMS 200 .... Is there any light cast on the wall-wart PSU planned for the Detox?

Tim,

I have a suitable 1300mA Wall Wart PSU for Detox - we should have samples soon and will post pictures...

Also, the MDAC2 VR PSU has a separate isolated DC output for the Detox - so you will not need the Wall Wart PSU.

 

[jirij]

Yes Roon can stream to squeezelite but there are advantages with Roonbridge such as better protocol that handles clock and multiple devices. Just settle on testing squeezelite. Those that want roonbridge like me can istall it themselves self.
It would be neat to be able to select squeezebox or Roon from the remote just as any other source (future feature request)

I looked into roonbridge as I'm preparing a tiny ~30MB system for the FDAC and holy hell, that thing bundles full Mono (a.k.a. ".NET for linux") in addition to needing glibc (though roon seems to be interested in how other libc alternatives work), being basically the size of my entire OS (which already includes squeezelite, ~50KB) just by itself.
In addition, roonserver (which could be nice for files stored on the FDAC HDDs) needs implicit CIFS support (you know, because everybody uses NTFS), etc.

Sigh, that's the problem of closed-source.

 

[JohnW]

I looked into roonbridge as I'm preparing a tiny ~30MB system for the FDAC and holy hell, that thing bundles full Mono (a.k.a. ".NET for linux") in addition to needing glibc (though roon seems to be interested in how other libc alternatives work), being basically the size of my entire OS (which already includes squeezelite, ~50KB) just by itself.
In addition, roonserver (which could be nice for files stored on the FDAC HDDs) needs implicit CIFS support (you know, because everybody uses NTFS), etc.

Sigh, that's the problem of closed-source.

I'm so glad you care about memory size - my first computer had 1K of memory and we still programmed games!

Small = Fast and normally more stable and well written!

 

[jirij]

At least HQPlayer NAA seems reasonable - 350KB and the required libraries aren't anything exotic, all standard libc stuff + ALSA. We might end up needing glibc instead of musl libc (making the image bigger), but it's not the end of the world. Too bad it has license that seems to prevent us from using it.

 

[BrianPK]

The plan is to ship out the MDAC2 in Stage1 form, and once the ADC is ready then we can then ship out the ADC PCB for "Diy" installation - or you can return your MDAC2 back here to Czech and we will install and test.

Thank you,John, for clearing that up for me.

 

[JohanH]

my first computer had 1K of memory and we still programmed games!

Small = Fast and normally more stable and well written!

NASCOM?

Johan

 

[Rune]

I looked into roonbridge as I'm preparing a tiny ~30MB system for the FDAC and holy hell, that thing bundles full Mono (a.k.a. ".NET for linux") in addition to needing glibc (though roon seems to be interested in how other libc alternatives work), being basically the size of my entire OS (which already includes squeezelite, ~50KB) just by itself.
In addition, roonserver (which could be nice for files stored on the FDAC HDDs) needs implicit CIFS support (you know, because everybody uses NTFS), etc.

Sigh, that's the problem of closed-source.

Yes it sucks, but I understand why they are using Mono. It makes it much easier to do cross platform development Roon runs on Windows, OS X and Linux.

When I look at HTOP on my RPI 2 it uses 75MB with dietPi and RoonBridge playing. Still a relative small footprint on a RPI even though RoonBridge is the major part of it

I am also concerned about size, but I need RoonBridge or at least be able to install it myself so it would be nice if the dependencies is included. CIFS is not needed for RoonBridge think it is only ALSA that is needed.

RoonCore Server is not relevant on the RPI it will only run on X86. We only need RoonBridge.

I'm so glad you care about memory size - my first computer had 1K of memory and we still programmed games!

Small = Fast and normally more stable and well written!

1Kb was in 1980