Soekrates detailed labelling

Back to single small chassis for the Soekrates

I'm excited! I found this thing while browsing the web the other day.

It's called 'The Wire LT3042 Parallel Reg PSU' and is, fittingly, a LT3042-based power supply with two rails per board. The thing is, it's sized at 74mm x 26mm for a DUAL RAIL! That means I need only two for the Soekrates if I parallel the bipolar supply into each DAM board and this allows me to use only one transformer and therefore shrink the size of the Soekrates to a very manageable size.

DAC updates (this is revision 11!!)

I've just realized that the number of times I've updated the DAC design so far is quite daunting. I've again reverted it to the dual chassis design due to not liking the large form factor of the single chassis design.

Backplane board for the Soekrates

I've decided to design my own backplane board for the Soekrates. Here's the circuit diagram that I intend to use (which might change at any time):

The J1, J2 and J3 headers follow this format, and there are two of them because of the dual DAM1021 balanced setup:

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!

DAC update, transformer update and rough bill of materials for parts

Small update to the DAC. Just some size and layout changes. Its size (and colour!) has been changed to be a little larger to accommodate all the electronics.

As the below picture shows, I included the footprint of all the parts that will be attached to the front and back panels which necessitated the slight size increase.

Short interest check

Just a short interest check.

If you are still interested in maybe having a Soekrates made by me, do use the contact form or email me directly at waltertsowalter@gmail with the subject soekrates. Thanks!