Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

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Nick
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#46 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Nick »

I was nowhere close to that. Nearest I got, was sending JPEG frames captured and compressed by a Cyrus chip (I think) and then stored onto a hard disk, and then streamed via ISDN to a remote station for security use. It would capture the frames around alarm activation, call up the monitoring station and dump the alarm images and then follow with live frames. You could send audio ("oy, bugger off". etc) and motor commands back to the remote station from the control centre. Originally it was a hack of a protocol, then we sold to banks, so I had to write a x25 implementation to send over their networks. Then I had to do it all again with a ip stack to allow it to talk via ppp to unix boxes.

It also got sold to ferry companies to take pictures of wagons as they loaded, and the other end if the driver claimed damage, they could call up the matching images and see the before and after.

You could do it all with stuff from PC World now.
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#47 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by JamesD »

Yeah isn't progress wonderful!

I recently had to spec. out an 8K UHD system that part had to work at baseband - 130Gb/s over IP link with a realtime stream- good excuse for some 400Gb/s cards and guess what? Most of them won't work at 400Gb/s yet... even as a burst rate let alone for streaming... They have 16K UHD running in the Dev. labs now and in limited production...

But I like your story - really innovative stuff then too at the time as witnessed by the banks buying it - They always have some neat technology amongst all the legacy stuff...

BTW we still use jpg frames for video compression on high end contribution circuits not just JPG2000 for HD but JPG-XS for UHD - sound principle!
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Ray P
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#48 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Ray P »

Ant wrote: Tue Sep 22, 2020 4:15 pm The topping e30 dac arrived... Like it...
Result Ant. :thumbup:
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#49 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Ant »

Got the soundcard today, it will have to wait abit until i can sample the delta and the sb as ive got a lot of work on this week.
Im wondering how best to do it, ill need a program that can realtime record and create me a wav file. Any suggestions?
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#50 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

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Nick
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#51 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Nick »

Yep, just record into audacity from both sources, leave a space before you start playing to give both recordings a gap at the front, then send me the two wav (or convert to flac to make it smaller to send) files and I will remove the leading space and see how the numbers differ.
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#52 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Neal »

Ant, are you using the same CD for both the SB and Arcam? IE are you ripping the track from the CD then playing the rip vs the CD
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#53 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Ant »

Yes
Thats what sparked the curiosity
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#54 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Ant »

Got a fairly cheap linear psu for the topping dac the other day. Cant say i can tell if theres any improvement over the phone charger i was powering it with before, either that or it takes forever to warm up from switch on
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#55 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Ant »

Transport has started to play up. The drawer has started not quite shutting, and started to have issues reading certain discs.
A new motor belt might solve the drawer problem, it has 2, a toothed belt from an intermediate pulley to the drawer mechanism and a normal belt from a pulley on the same shaft as the intermediate toothed pulley to the motor.
Id suspect its the flat belt causing the issue, and those are available.

The disc read issue is when its cold, give it half an hour and its fine. An odd one.

I might have to buy something else to use for a bit until i can get some time to look at it properly. Maybe an old philips with a digital out, or maybe something nicer that i can re sell once the delta is working properly again

When i opened it up to clean the inside of the display window i did notice a reg chip that looked abit dodgy, looks like it had gotten hot so maybe that has something to do with it.
Hmmm
An expense i could really do without..........
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#56 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Michael L »

pre65 wrote: Fri Sep 18, 2020 9:19 pm Could be an AK4393 Ant, I have one I made some years ago, it's in a Modushop case.

And another one (can't remember the chip) in a World Designs case.

I must try my old DACs and see how they sound.

I think Nick said (recently) that a proprietary chip (like the AK range) with a decent output stage was the way to go.
I dug out my old Pink Triangle Ordinal a couple of weeks ago and I've been using it with SBT and Whammy HPA. Sounds great. Not sure what the point is of a transport with excellent streaming available. I'm using Quobus.
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#57 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Ant »

I dont do streaming it does nothing for me tbh
I dont want to pay for another subscription service either
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#58 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Michael L »

Ant wrote: Sun Nov 14, 2021 9:26 pm I dont do streaming it does nothing for me tbh
I dont want to pay for another subscription service either
My first love is vinyl and I have to admit that when I visited Scalford some years back and saw people playing music files from their MacBooks I was very dismissive.
Nowadays I like the sound and choice using the iPad going through favourites and exploring new music (iPeng+Qobus+SBT).
I am still happiest playing an lp but I am content with this digital offering though I never thought I would enjoy digital going back some years - it all sounded very unnatural to me.
Everyone to their own of course.
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#59 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Ant »

I just play lps and cds. ive got 2 squeezeboxes, i have used my mac mini into a dac and i have an apple tv that i used to use to stream. I could set the apple tv or one of the sb's back up right now and be streaming if i wanted to. But they have all just sat gathering dust for years now.
I have the hardware to do it, i just find it all a pain in the arse.
I should really sell them apart from the mac, i need that for accounts
Theres a couple of thousand tracks on it thats just taking up hd space
Digital just holds no interest for me whatsoever, im not that bothered what the cd player sounds like i just like to be able to play the cds i have
Ive just bought a cyrus cd7 for not a great deal of money to replace the delta until i can get around to sorting it out. No need for a dac either so that will free up some space and sockets
It will do the job, its also small so it can fit into the big rack with the lps in it so ill be able to move one of the tts to where the delta is now. I suppose failures are part of the risk you take buying 30 year old tech
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#60 Re: Dac for an arcam delta 170.3 transport

Post by Ant »

Well the cyrus turned up today.

quite a bit deeper front to back than i was expecting but thats ok. I didnt expect the chassis base to be plastic either but again no problem, the philips units ive had have all had plastic chassis.

The cd tray is an awful flimsy plastic thing too. I shall have to be relatively careful with it.

Unboxed it then left it a couple of hours to warm itself up to room temp before i got round to setting it up, just to be on the safe side, and it powered up fine.
Stuck a brand new cd in it that the missus got for her birthday on monday, it played it fine, so i stuck in a cd that the delta had a fit trying to play yesterday and eventually did. The cyrus just read and played it.
Then onto an old burned cd that is quite scratched up. The arcam played that one the other day after protesting mightily, and after being berated and told it would be hacked into pieces.
The cyrus read and played it no problem.
Sounds nice too. Not as nice as the delta with mi dads m1 dac on it (swapped it with him, Hes using my topping e30 and linear power supply at the moment) but then we are talking about a 15 year difference between the dac in the cyrus and the m1, and a 20 year difference to the e30. I could, if i was arsed, plug the m1 into it. But i cant, it sounds fine as is.

I got a belt for the delta drawer, and ill have a dig around in it when i get around to it and see if i can fix it. The cdm1 mk2 optics are supposed to be practically bulletproof, so im hoping that doing some work on the surrounding circuitry will get it up and running again. The reg with the suspect heat marks and dried out old caps around it could be the issue. We shall see

Oh and why isnt there a bloody off switch on the cyrus? It just goes onto standby. Daft.
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