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Twisted Pear Audio Opus DAC - Page 4

post #46 of 987
8/4/07 at 11:36pm
Yeah, seriously. My first thought was transport, but that's probably just because that's been on my mind lately.

If not what, how about a likely time-frame. Near-future is rather relative O_o

Ah well, that's the nature of the beast, I s'pose...
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post #47 of 987
8/4/07 at 11:37pm
Run? I'm not going anywhere. Brian didn't go into great detail about what they were up to but did hint at a few things. About as specific as I could get would be to answer fierce's questions with yes, yes, and yes. Brian said Russ is cranking out things faster than he can deal with them at this point.
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post #48 of 987
8/4/07 at 11:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by fierce_freak View Post
My first thought was transport,
Get out of my brain! It's dangerous in there!

I was hoping the exact same thing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by n_maher View Post
Run? I'm not going anywhere. Brian didn't go into great detail about what they were up to but did hint at a few things. About as specific as I could get would be to answer fierce's questions with yes, yes, and yes. Brian said Russ is cranking out things faster than he can deal with them at this point.
Now that is interesting!
Thanks for the hints Nate.
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post #49 of 987
8/4/07 at 11:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by fierce_freak View Post
Yeah, seriously. My first thought was transport, but that's probably just because that's been on my mind lately.
I think I mighta heard something about that, but in all honesty I'm not 100% sure about that. We talked about both modding transports and also standalone units so I could be getting those two conversations mixed up.

Quote:
If not what, how about a likely time-frame. Near-future is rather relative O_o
Some are seriously close and those I'm sure most are already aware of. The next round of Opus DACs are due in shortly, the next gen remote controlled stepper. A whole host of module add ons for the DAC's to allow various inputs, etc.
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post #50 of 987
8/5/07 at 12:03am
This looks like an interesting project to try. At first glance, it looks like it's designed for balanced output only with an add-on board to convert to single-ended. Is that right? Are those who have built one running it balanced or single-ended?
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post #51 of 987
8/5/07 at 12:20am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by n_maher View Post
Ha! I'm sure it won't stay that way for long.

And I had quite the interesting visit with Brian from Twisted Pear yesterday. All I can say is keep your eyes on these guys. They've got some really cool stuff planned in the near future.
Wow you're lucky to be able to visit them, they certainly have a lot of cool stuff coming out. I've seen them drop hints and showing off some of there prototyping stuff over in their diyaudio threads. I really do like what I've seen so far

greyhorse: I am completely aware that it's overkill.....but I'm somewhat of a fan of overkill when building DIY stuff I noticed their TXD modules, and I'm thinking of using two of those as line drivers for the opus dac's output. A twisted pear substitute for the zapfilter, I'm hoping. I'm thinking of possibly going for even more overkill and using sigma's to power those boards too

BradJudy: It is indeed designed for balanced output, with an add-on board to convert to single ended.
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post #52 of 987
8/5/07 at 10:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by BradJudy View Post
This looks like an interesting project to try. At first glance, it looks like it's designed for balanced output only with an add-on board to convert to single-ended. Is that right? Are those who have built one running it balanced or single-ended?
If you could live with a little less output power you can use the DAC single-ended without a problem. A balanced source, by definition, just puts out an in-phase (L+/R+) and out-of-phase (L-/R-) signals. Either one could be used as a single ended signal. Just look at the CIAudio VDA-2, that's exactly what its output is doing. So the single ended output board is just designed so that you get the full output power of the DAC, which I'm guessing could easily be lived without.
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post #53 of 987
8/5/07 at 10:39am
Thread Starter 
I've always seen recommendations to use a transformer when converting a balanced output to single ended. I always thought that you could simply use one of the in phase signals for SE, but never saw it recommended. I guess it's less than optimal?

edit: Ah, just different paths to an end....
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post #54 of 987
8/5/07 at 11:24am
Don't want to be seen as plugging products or anything, but just want to answer some questions...

The idea with the pre-reg supply is just to provide a really clean DC for and to lessen the voltage drop of the SMT the on board regs. Sigma 11 should work fine. It's all about ripple reduction there. The current draw is so tiny that you would be hard pressed to create a power supply that runs dry. You can't use a split-rail supply (Sigma 22).

The Ballsie also adds an optional LP filter from the Wolfson datasheet. It actually allows you to use the filter and keep balanced outs, in addition to the SE outs. As said previously, it basically eliminates the 6dB drop of using one side of the balanced outputs. It also gives you an output buffer by it's nature. Transformers would work very well for the conversion as well (we contemplated a transformer board, but thought it would be easy to perf board it or use an existing product).

We basically make stuff that we want for ourselves, so that's our general direction
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post #55 of 987
8/5/07 at 11:45am
Great to see you here Brian and thanks again for the tour around Pear HQ.
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post #56 of 987
8/5/07 at 1:14pm
My secretary says "Hi."
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post #57 of 987
8/5/07 at 9:41pm
Haha, cant wait until the Opus is in stock again, will you be selling sets that include the Ballsie? Will operating two Opus units in dual-differential improve the sound on the Ballsie?
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post #58 of 987
8/5/07 at 11:25pm
Thanks for the notes. I've run balanced outputs to single-ended as mentioned here before, but wanted to be sure there wasn't anything unusual going on with this DAC. I'll be pretty tempted to try this out when the kits are shipping again.
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post #59 of 987
8/6/07 at 12:16am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianDonegan View Post
Don't want to be seen as plugging products or anything, but just want to answer some questions...

The idea with the pre-reg supply is just to provide a really clean DC for and to lessen the voltage drop of the SMT the on board regs. Sigma 11 should work fine. It's all about ripple reduction there. The current draw is so tiny that you would be hard pressed to create a power supply that runs dry. You can't use a split-rail supply (Sigma 22).

The Ballsie also adds an optional LP filter from the Wolfson datasheet. It actually allows you to use the filter and keep balanced outs, in addition to the SE outs. As said previously, it basically eliminates the 6dB drop of using one side of the balanced outputs. It also gives you an output buffer by it's nature. Transformers would work very well for the conversion as well (we contemplated a transformer board, but thought it would be easy to perf board it or use an existing product).

We basically make stuff that we want for ourselves, so that's our general direction
Glad to see you here Brian! I was thinking of using the TXD as a buffer, but it looks like the Ballsie will do just fine I like how a lot of the stuff I'd like to make matches the stuff you folks have been making
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post #60 of 987
8/6/07 at 2:02am
Welcome Brian and thanks for putting out an outstanding product!
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