MDAC First Listen (part 00111000)
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Steven Toy
Accuphase newbie
I'm always very happy to hear from you - shame we could not meet during our recent trip UK trip.
Buddy's (not Bobby you met) Kidney levels are out of the Red zone, but he has elevated Liver levels, he's on a special diet and we are going for a Bloody test tomorrow, but he's doing much better. I hit the bed this morning at 5am - Buddy sprung up and then spent the next hour hunting his fluffy toys next to me! I was happy to see him so fully of energy, although I was exhausted I could not tell him off to go back to sleep!
OK noted, thank you.
The GBP250 is the built price for the streamer PCB (including development fee) - we are also exploring the possibility of increasing the onboard Flash memory from 4GB to 64GB to allow a decent amount of onboard music file storage and also to reduce possible system Bus B/W limitations while recording DSD256 files.
The documentation for the ARM controller is very limited, so while we have added the memory to our PCB design we can only confirm the option works once we build the latest revision streamer board (A03). If we can increase the memory size then it will be added as an extra cost option, I'm excited to have a single one box solution for my Music
The local eMMC Memory also solves a pending availability issue the CM3 module - the CM3 with 4GB onboard eMMC is in very limited supply, while Farnell has over 5K of the CM3 Lite (version without memory) which we would use with our local onboard 64GB memory solution.
Also note that the streamer PCB no longer supports Composite Video output
With the updated front panel, the headphones can remain plugged into the rear panel and selected by a front panel button.
Renata sends her warmest regards
How about a headphone jack on the side?
It obviates the problem of the cable pulling on the jack and socket.
Although I can no longer afford the Detox, I sent you a payment of £50 on August 7, 2016, and am just noting that I have not received any emails about it this last month so others might not either.
fred sonnen
pfm Member
Greetings
I have not received any e-mails from you despite having paid the Detox dev fee and from the number of similar replies above there may be many more?
This has now arrived. Thank you.
John,
Can you remind/summarise to us please what will be happening with the streamer board and its production runs (plural?)
My understanding at the moment is that the streamer board will be redundant until the MDAC is produced. When first talking about the streamer board being the first production item you also mentioned the concept of the DEVDAC, and it's mentioned on the page about the streamer http://mdac2.lakewestaudio.com/mdac2_streamer.htm. But you haven't commented on it since, hence my surmising that the streamer board will first used in the MDAC2.
And whether or not the DEVDAC board comes into existence, when will those who want a streamer board for the MDAC2 have to order it. Ie. there will be an initial production run of streamer boards soon, but when/will there be a subsequent run?
Thanks
Can you remind/summarise to us please what will be happening with the streamer board and its production runs (plural?)
My understanding at the moment is that the streamer board will be redundant until the MDAC is produced. When first talking about the streamer board being the first production item you also mentioned the concept of the DEVDAC, and it's mentioned on the page about the streamer http://mdac2.lakewestaudio.com/mdac2_streamer.htm. But you haven't commented on it since, hence my surmising that the streamer board will first used in the MDAC2.
And whether or not the DEVDAC board comes into existence, when will those who want a streamer board for the MDAC2 have to order it. Ie. there will be an initial production run of streamer boards soon, but when/will there be a subsequent run?
Thanks
JohnW
pfm member
Chris,
We will issues the A03 MDAC2 Streamer PCB tomorrow - which has the repositioned headphone jack for the updated front panel and other small updates over the A02 board (that was designed but not issued).
We will have 8 bare A03 PCB's manufactured so we can populate a few Pcs for those interested in getting a streamer PCB ahead of the MDAC2.
We have been overloaded with design work, and the DEVDAC has been on a back burner - but discussing it with Jarek this evening we feel there is some benefit to manufacturing the board, so we plan to have the PCB released over the weekend.
I want to wrap to the PFM projects ASAP so we don't plan to divert our limited time resources to become a production manufacturer - we will only manufacture the promised units so ATM, the streamer will be a onetime batch run.
That said, I have invested heavily into our own mini production line so we can always manufacture extra boards at sometime in the future - but its not planned or a certainty.
JohnW
pfm member
Matt,
Sorry for this, its better to Email Renata directly and avoid me in the loop
I've forward your message so you should hear back from her tomorrow.
Just to clarify (so we're not accidentally talking at cross purposes)
- there will be this pre-production run of units,
- and then there will be a single later run of streamers for the (single) production run of MDAC2s?
- there won't just be a single run of 8 streamers total, forever?
I'm wondering when you think the main run of streamers will be?
jadidih101
pfm Member
JohnW,
I am getting rather concern AGAIN that there does not seem to be any apparent progress on MDAC2/DAC/PSU boards. At least nothing in any of your posts.
As far as I can tell the last almost 5/6 months has been just about streamer board. I understand that it is important but surly not at the expense of totally not having any reported progress of MDAC2. As far as I know there is no finished design yet let alone a planed test PCB but we are on A03 version of the streamer PCB.
Please advise where we are with the design and development of these boards and please make it a proper answer/plan and not just a "we will be working on it soon". Sorry for being direct but I am getting rather irritated by apparent lack of progress on the main products.
Appreciate if you can take a bit of your time in answering my post. My previous post seemed to have been ignored regarding this.
Cheers.
JohnW
pfm member
MDAC2 is my main project and progressing well - we target end of September (or after Detox PCB's) to build the first complete MDAC2 PCB's.
I have a trip pending to Asia to make final arrangements with various MDAC2 parts suppliers and hand carry as much back with me as possible.
From where I'm sitting MDAC2 coming along nicely it will follow the Streamer / Detox so as these designs nearer production so does MDAC2.
JohnW
pfm member
Yes, we plan to build 8 Pcs. within the month
Yes correct, once the PnP machine arrives the first 8 Pcs will be hand placed but using the Solder stencil and reflow oven.
No, dont worry - the first 8 pcs are being built to gain experience with the IR reflow heat profile, solder "pasting" and then serve as software development units etc.
The Streamer PCB is the most heat sensitive PCB in the MDAC2 so we will take extra care to get the IR profile correct - and the other PCB's will benefit.
If we decide to go with the CM3Lite module then we need to place a BGA eMMC memory IC on our PCB and we are rather worried about this. I've just ordered BGA reballing kits incase / when we mess up!
Presuming we have sourced all the components then within a couple of weeks of the PnP machine being installed.
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