[art]

[bitter old guy mode]

When I was at university, I spent $100/semester on books. Working on a hot loading dock cleared slightly more than $400 for an entire summer worth of work.

[/bitter old guy mode]
[grouchy audio designer mode]

Times have changed. $400 won't buy parts to do more than a handful of these. It will barely buy the chassis (Hammond) and power transformer (Signal) to do 10 of these.
[/grouchy audio designer mode]

Yeah, we plan to make more than 10 at a time. Only way to make money. $500 for the whole shootin' match is looking like a real good guess now.

Or.......you can spend more on just a power supply from someone else.........your choice. That is what the free market is supposed to be about.

Pat

[dmatt]

Okay $500 it is.  But only if you sell an additional BNC connector at cost and throw in a free soldered hunk of coax.   

[Folsom]

I had a really well paying job before school so I have been slowly selling things off that I bought before school. It is slowly dwindling.

The audio keeps me sane. I drink less and have less stress. (Actually I do not drink at all now) Plus I am a dance major so keeping music around is really good, my studying at home is listening to rhythm, progression, bars, etc... Then I have to find stuff for choreographing.

My job does not pay enough for me to spend money I can not create by selling things I already own. That creates the oddity of trying to figure out money wise to get things. I just know my SB3 is a light year and a half behind a CD player I got for $7 from my friend who scored it at a yard sale. I am tempted to just use it and forget about music servers except the fact that I just rip CDs and only buy one once in a great while.

Things to note, I make more than $400 at the docks... but I got no books to buy. I spend all my money on food to support my body. I have debts I will have to pay off after college. Graduate school is not really going to pay for itself necessarily due to my major.

[F-100]

Goal is $500 for the whole shootin' match.
Pat

Is this price including labor?

[F-100]

$500 maybe, but not with a DUET in that price for me. Hmmm

Unless you want to pay $5.5K more for the other mod. 

[art]

Okay $500 it is.  But only if you sell an additional BNC connector at cost and throw in a free soldered hunk of coax.   

OK, you drive a hard bargain. You guys are bleeding me to death!

Pat

[art]

Goal is $500 for the whole shootin' match.
Pat

Is this price including labor?

That is the plan.......

Such a deal.

Pat

[Occam]

...........
I know you guys love to compare stuff.

I know which one will sound better, but it would not hurt for someone totally impartial to say what they think.

Pat

Apologies for the threadjack, 're-purposing' of your comments and other ill mannered behavior to bend your work to my pernicious needs.

But therein lies the rub..... Given the transitory nature of auditory memory, what one really wants to do is have 2 not interfering spdif outputs, putting out the same datastream, so that one can switch the outputs via a preamp of 2 exactly the same dacs. This would allow one to actually compare the differences between power cords, interconnects, spdif cables, etc.... on those dacs.

So Pat, would you do me a 'special', your mods with TWO (isolated?) spdif outputs? It would be a grand boon to those in our community, and my own self serving needs. I'm tired of those posts prefaced with "As and engineer/scientist, its absurd to suggest...." (much like Star Jones -"I'm a lawyer"), dismissing via thought experiment that which should/could be addressed empirically. I assume such is not trivial and not practical without mucho re-engineering; but one can hope.

Regards,
Paul

[art]

Well, it could be done. But I would have to make a special PCB.

Anyway, I think that $500 is now way too cheap. Using this post as a basis (and a few others along with it), we ought to charge $3000.

But then, we should also sell our $200 cable for $600-$800.

We don't. So no more kvetching about price.

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=60365.msg538838#msg538838

I especially like this part:

"Note: Parts count is irrelevant. A good circuit that performs is priceless."

Keep in mind that some of us don't have to atone for being a horse's butt for almost a whole year to go. So, don't get me going on cheepnis.

Pat

[art]

  Graduate school is not really going to pay for itself necessarily due to my major.

Like becoming an engineer so that you are permanently unemployable at 45 was a better choice? Sorry, but all of us unemployed engineers don't have much sympathy for your choice. We all did what we did because it is what we were supposed to be. So, deal with it. We all did.

Pat

[andy_c]

Edited:  Let discretion be the better part of valor to avoid getting Pat (and me!) in trouble.

[ajayrav]

Pat,

As someone who is probably going to plonk down the $500 for your mods sight unseen (or sound unheard!!), I would like a description of how the mods alter the sound of the original Duet receiver.  I know that sound perception is very personal, but would appreciate your take on how your mod betters music playback from the standard Duet. 

Thanks,
Ajay

[tanchiro58]

Pat,

When are you going to start receiving order? I hope I will be the first one.

[brj]

Thank you, Andy.

Good luck with the mods, Pat - this has been a great thread!

[art]

Pat,

As someone who is probably going to plonk down the $500 for your mods sight unseen (or sound unheard!!), I would like a description of how the mods alter the sound of the original Duet receiver.  I know that sound perception is very personal, but would appreciate your take on how your mod betters music playback from the standard Duet. 

Thanks,
Ajay

I have absolutely no idea. No one here has any MP3s or ripped CDs. We will all have to wait until the guys listening the initial units get theirs.

In any case, I do not listen to any of my designs. I have been doing this too long to be helpful in that matter. Some folks refer to this condition as "designer's ears". We know what we did, and have expectations what it will actually do. No one else here has designer's ears, but we are all burned out after 20+ years of this stuff.

(I stopped going to trade shows about 12 years ago, as I could no longer stand to hear the same music in every venue in high-end world.)

The first ones should be here this week. It may be a few days after that until I have power supplies ready. Working on 2 different ones. Will probably make 2 of each, and have the guys swap to see which one they like.

One will have more filter caps; that is the main difference. We may go with that one based on nothing other than form factor. Yeah, I know....silly way to make a business decision.

Remember: this mainly addresses the digital output. We did stick in a quieter regulator for the DAC, and got rid of a lot of the parts we consider to be not suitable for audio. But, the coupling caps are the same. I have no plans to sit down and listen to a bunch of SMT 'lytics to see which ones are the least offensive. Since we intend to keep the original box intact, no audiophile caps are going into this.

I did one Duet mod for a guy some months ago. He compared it to his SB3, that I also worked on. All 3 units will have the same output stage, but this one will have a discrete low-jitter clock, and a power supply that is adequate for that application. The clock distribution will be cleaner. The clock and SPDIF will no longer share the same chip, so the content correlated crud on the clock will go away.

So, it should sound at least as good as that one. Probably better. Maybe he will notice this post, and point to where he mentions the differences my last mods did.

OK.........here is what we probably should keep under wraps.

You all know that we are not in the mod business, and are therefore reluctant to do this work. But there is a sinister reason for it.

We stopped making DACs in the early 90s. A lot of reasons, but one was that we did not make a transport to go with it.

This solves that problem.

We also have a USB-based transport in the works.

I will start on the DAC design next year. No idea at all how expensive it will be, but it will run hot. Don't ask why. Lots of discrete circuits, with no global feedback. That is all that I can say for right now.

Pat

[Folsom]

Then how can you inform me if the DUET's internal volume control is satisfactory or not with your mods?

[art]

Give me a break.

Let's just agree that nothing that we do will satisfy your needs. I suggest that you look elsewhere for a solution to whatever problems need to be addressed in your system.

Pat

[Folsom]

I think that is a legitamate question because you could say "it appears that you get the best sound from having the volume on the SB higher to drive a DAC, and use a passive volume control". It would just be useful information to know. For that matter I guess you could figure it out via instruments so I do not have to ask you to listen to it, but I do suspect you could tell me from one point or another why this or that.

I have looked at your website and equipment, it all looks very nice, so I know you know what you are doing, but I have to consider everything when I think about gearing up and eventually leading to having the money for $500 modification and a $400 unit.

[art]

You are mixing apples and oranges. The SB3 has tons of noise on the output, mainly because of the way the supplies are designed and how the display enters into that.

The Duet has none of those issues. There is nothing that we are doing that will have any effect on the volume control. Asking me if it will work in your situation is a moot point. I do not know what your situation is, and frankly I don't care to know. Your question is better directed an the people who designed it in the first place.

Pat

[jman66]

DOS -

The volume control the SB3 and Duet controls both the analog (RCAs) and digital (spdif) output levels.
It is digitally implemented, reason why the bit depth is increased from 16 to 24 bits.
Within a certain window, the volume control is lossless as it works off the extra 8 bits. Go below a certain point and real 16 bit data begins to get tossed.
Unless you're running the SB3/Duet directly into an amp, you'd want the volume control set to MAX.


Pat - do you think the wireless card in the Duet adds any contamination ?