Graveyard post

Hi, guys! So, I did end up disappearing for the past few months and I'm sorry for that; the school workload had become a little too much to handle so I had to take some time off this project to make sure everything was all caught up. I do have an announcement to make.

This project is still happening!

However, I won't put any ETAs this time because I can't promise anything, what with having to balance this and my education. I'll start a trickle feed of updates again, but they probably won't appear as often as before so please bear with me. I do have a couple worth mentioning so here goes.

Small update

Sorry for the lack of updates but there has been absolutely no progress whatsoever! However, I have my WaveIO now! This means that with the DiYinHK power supplies, I can start prototyping the Soekrates at last but my Wire PSUs still haven't arrived so I can't guarantee that the DAC will sound exactly as it does as a final product.

Soekrates Update 13

Had a chat with a nice chap and have decided on reverting to a single-ended configuration because of Soren's quote that balanced doesn't add much if at all to the sound:

diyAudio Member   Join Date: Jun 2009

Although I don't see the big need for the DAC resistor string to be balanced, balanced signals are most useful for box to box interconnect.... You will get 3 db better S/N ratio, not that it's needed, there should already be 126 db S/N ratio at the resistor string.... __________________ Søren

This will shave off roughly $500 off the total price of the DAC as well as let me make it a lot less tall than what it is currently, so that's exactly what I did. (9in x 7.5in x 3in or 228.4mm x 190.5mm x 75.4mm).

Progress update

Apologies for not posting much at all.

The project is stalled for now, as I had both my proto boards sent to a friend in the US to save on shipping (as I planned to have him ship many things at once). I had everything planned out until I found out I couldn't pay for the shipping label with my PayPal then it started falling apart from there. In addition to that, he can't send them on with his own money due to very complicated reasons so I pretty much have run out of things to do without touching the boards themself.

That said, I'm thinking about the different engineering challenges and compromises that is involved with the use of one board verses the use of two. Use of a single board means that differential output has to pass through two opamps via a single-ended to balanced buffer and it'll have a noticeable (adverse imo) affect on sound quality due to the opamps. This can be somewhat remedied if I swap the opamps but it adds another element of failure for the manufacturing process and then we'll have a whole new debate over which opamps different people want. This can be somewhat fixed if I stick a socket there but it will add noise and then I might as well not change the opamps.

However, having two boards adds its own challenges too. I have to parallel each of the digital inputs and supply power supplies to each board (I'm not sure what effect paralleling the same supply will have as per the latest plan I have), connect the serial lines to each other and increase the height of the enclosure significantly to take the two boards. This is without taking into account any other mods I may or may not perform for sound quality (as detailed on the blog) as twice the number of boards means twice the failure rate.

The reason why I'm troubling over this is because I would much prefer to offer either SE or differential options only as offering both would mean having to increase the price across the board due to smaller production runs meaning more expensive per-unit costs. Overall, I still haven't decided on whether to use dual or single boards (especially because an extra board also increases the price by a large chunk).

WaveIO cost updates

Lucian and I have been exchanging emails and we've managed to work something out:

  From what I understand so far, you need only the isolated I2S port thus
the parts from SPDIF and non-isolated outputs will be removed. Given
this, the price for one board became 94.6 Euro.

  As for discounts, first I would like to tell you that, in order to have
an affordable price for this board while offering the best audio quality
at the moment of designing (which is reflected in good layout and best
components for this board) I'm acquiring parts for quantities of 250
WaveIOs at a time. Anyway, there are some margins that can be bend so we
all can have financial benefits and here they are:

  For orders of 20+ boards: the discount is 3% per board. This means that
for an order of 20 boards, you'll pay 91.762 Euro per board.
  For orders of 50+ boards: the discount is 6% per board. In this case,
for an order of 50 pcs. the price for one board becomes 88.924 Euro.

  In case of 100+ orders: the discount is 9% per board. Here one board
have a price of 86.086 Euro.

  I hope my mathematics are okay at this hour :-)
  Anyway, to put it simple, on orders of 50+ you'll pay for maximum 47
WaveIOs and get minimum three WaveIOs for free. At orders starting with
100 pcs. you'll pay for maximum 91 boards while get minimum 9 for free.

  In addition, for ALL orders over 20 pcs. you have the chance to have
your own customized drivers meaning that you can change the "WaveIO"
name on Windows installation and firmware and put the name of your DAC
there, for example! In addition, the image used at instalation process
can be changed with your own one: changed from Luckit/WaveIO to the name
of your DAC.

It would be awesome to sell 20 of the Soekrates DACs and have it be called Soekrates when it's recognized by the computer!

New mouse, new DAC updates, new switches and WaveIO

I was delighted to find a parcel waiting for me today. Opening it up, I found myself with a new mouse, and damn if this one isn't perfect for the kind of work I do. Anyways, with this post and the new mouse comes my motivation, an end to the filler posts and a new major update. Here we go!

Firstly and most importantly, thanks to my great friend Ralph (@thatBeatsguy on Head-Fi), we have a logo for our Philosophy of Sound high-end brand that I'm actually happy with. Isn't it beautiful? He's also the one behind how well formatted and nice my blog looks and I thought I'd give him a shout-out for it now. I really appreciate the effort he's put in for me so far and I hope he'll be happy to continue working with me.

New $200 amplifier

I also have in the top of my head a ~$200 amplifier. Planned features are:

• Swappable op-amps to modify sound based on user preference
• 0.5x, 1x and 2.5x gain to allow use with a wide range of audio gear
• RCA and 2 x 3.5mm (one in the front, one in the back) input with an input selector
• 3.5mm and 6.3mm headphone outputs
• Compact form-factor to fit on many desks

I haven't decided whether I'll use an external wall wart as a linear power supply or AC in with my own power supply inside yet; that will have to be determined later on after I design the amplification circuit.

NAMES! update

So now, we've basically got our company name: Bucket Audio, the name of a high-end brand within our company: Philosophy of Sound, and DAC name: the Soekrates, sorted out! We even have logos on the way! Now what we need to do is create a website for the our business and we're set. Thanks Joe for providing the DAC name and inspiration for our high-end brand name!

Also,

BALANCED DUAL MONO OUTPUTS SO EXCITED!!!!!!

NAMES!

Guys, I need your help for both a company name and the name of the Soekris DAC! So far I have:

• Crescendo Audio Technology
• Thunk Audio
• Bucket Audio

For my brand and...the Grumple...for the name of the DAC, which granted is hilarious but is also absolutely ridiculous! I would appreciate some help to think of some names!

Let's get this party started!

My thread on HF got deleted so for anyone interested in keeping up to date with my Soekris DAC implementation I've made this blog to post my updates on. I will also post stuff about my personal audio journey here!