Thats great. Ill do my tests for sure.. off we go with old power supply.. gonna rip that part straight out. hehehe..
I do notice that the old power supply is somehow same similar size as those power adapters we got laying around from old equipment. mabye one of them might fit!
or purchase a china power supply that looks similar and has same bracket holes to reattach it..
these small power supplies from china cost like 20-30 dollars max.
U P D A T E
Hi again !
just out of curiosity i have opened some generic chinese smps ... of this type
i am not an expert but i got a bad feeling. The shield for instance is usually missing.
Cheap and very few parts ... uhmmm. No good.
Instead this in the picture below is the
12V/3A power brick by Dell i have used and mentioned above.
Much much better execution.
Problem is the size.
Every time i look inside the Tascam i get scared by the tiny space available for the psu.
I would prefer a different unit size ... even a 1U standard rack case but with much more space for the power supply section.
I see many professional interfaces having standard sizes.
Conclusion
i am more and more thinking to go for the
external psu solution.
This will allow me to try any 12V power supply around, switching or linear
My feeling is that this interface is a very sensitive tool for power supply quality.
Moreover i am a dog at diy and the risk to damage something is just around the corner.
I am waiting for some parts i have ordered.
I will post the result in any case
Thanks a lot again
Kind regards, gino
P.S. anyway ... with a cheap chinese switching bench power supply
i see 450mA of current draw at 12VDC
always with inputs and outputs open and using only the headphones.
So i guess a 12VDC/1A psu should be enough to power the unit.
In practical terms what i am going to do is to use the Tascam ( it samples at 192kHz providing spectra up to 96kHz )
with the Arta spectrum analyzer and see the noise using different power supplies.
Clearly the very interesting thing would be to check the noise coming directly from different psu to measure their ripple.
This is very very difficult to do wideband when noise is very low.
But it should be done to get a precise measure of the power supply quality.
Then when i will have found a very silent psu i will be done.
As an example i have
received today a new linear psu bought on ebay
This is what i get from Arta
i really do not know if the graph will vary with the break-in of the psu
But this is what i have in mind.
I hear often people talking about noise, sound of different psu.
my only guess is that
the lower the noise floor the better
Like also distortion that i am not able to measure, for now.
I do not know of any other way to test a psu.
Actually it is the only test that i can do with what i have at hand
Thanks a lot again for your very valuable advice and testing.
Your experience is what got me started.
Kind regards, gino