Inside High End Equipment

[Miska]

On 3/23/2018 at 3:21 AM, STC said:

PrimaLuna Prologue Two

@Ralf11 Pls see my first post. 

 

 

 

 

I have Prologue One, pretty neatly done point-to-point wiring. Auto-bias is on a board, but audio components are point-to-point.

 

[Miska]

Here's inside picture of RME ADI-2 Pro Anniversary Edition, taken through the top plate window with it's internal lighting...

 

On the left are analog inputs, in the middle analog outputs and on the right side is digital section.

 

[Miska]

42 minutes ago, marce said:

One has to ask how good glass is at EMC screening!

 

 

There are good screening glasses used in equipment rack doors, with embedded conductive layer. I don't know what kind of window this is. But I've measured this particular device and it certainly doesn't have problems on that front...

[Miska]

On 6/5/2018 at 6:16 AM, STC said:

Maybe PCB was too expensive then.

 

Lot of tube gear is made with point-to-point wiring. It works well because the circuits are fairly simple. Also the fairly new Prima Luna Prologue One, except the auto-bias functionality is on a PCB:

Quite neat layout regardless.

 

[Miska]

On 5/31/2018 at 3:14 PM, STC said:

 

You are welcome. The credit should go to my friend who like to keep a low profile.

 

 Here is another one.  Naim Hi Cap power supply. Replaced a voltage regulator.

 

 

 

Never understood how they charge so much for a very simple LM317 PSU!

 

[Miska]

On 7/11/2019 at 4:45 PM, STC said:

Made in France, $10000 Mimetism 20.1 CD player . Cheap CD-ROM drive. The most costly parts are the two front selector switches. 

 

 

 

In this one interesting part is the MCU controlling CD drive and feeding the DAC. Seems like somewhat original design.

 

[Miska]

17 hours ago, STC said:

Perhaps, product differentiation. Lexicon and Oppo category?

 

Oppo is standard Mediatek platform, almost all BD/SACD players these days use that. No need for manufacturer to know about programming.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, mansr said:

An audio CD has 16 bits per sample, no more and no less. If you somehow put 24-bit data onto a CD, standard players won't be able to play it.

 

That was a HDCD player? Somewhat similar to what MQA is trying again now. Practically means that the decoder/upsampling filter outputs 24-bit:

http://tech.juaneda.com/download/PMD100.pdf

 

IOW, not much different from other regular CD players apart from the HDCD peak extension feature.

 

P.S. These old digital filter chips are at least as good or better than what you can these days find in best DAC chips...

[Miska]

3 hours ago, fas42 said:

luckily, those more gung ho technical accomplishments didn't get in the way of delivering good sound 🙂.

 

Good sound is result of technical accomplishment...

 

[Miska]

14 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Which is why I prefixed the phrase with "gung ho" 🙂 - isn't it Chord who talks of -160dB or something noise levels being addressed - this is truly in the realm of imaginary do-gooding ... IME, all the problems lie roughly in the 70-80 dB down area - that's where the action is, if one is chasing best sound.

 

But not any better stop-band attenuation than the PMD chip in question here...