Taking orders :)

[Jim R.]

Dan,

This sounds really encouraging! I just recently read through this entire thread and I have to say that I'm really impressed and curious to hear it -- it's got bottlehead written all over it!

-- Jim

[RPMac]

What about the possibility of a second battery...charge one while the other is used? Are would that be necessary?

Got credit card in hand...just give the word

[Grainger49]

Interesting!  I see a Shielded Power Cable.  It looks much like the one I built with the Bottlehead Power Cord kit. 

What do you mean "  .  .  .    sounding with the charging circuit active"?

[tdogzthmn]

Nice to know the package fits on a manageable 6" x 6" plate rather than the larger previous versions. 

[John EH]

Well, thankfully John saved my a** by managing to repair the prototype board we blew last week. We're still not taking orders, but here is a photo of the most recent prototype that we have been playing with. This is 90% of the way to what the final will look like, save for some changes to the positioning of the various ports and slots. The panel is 6" square. The light at the front is the charging light. When on, unit is charging, when off, battery is fully charged. The switches are on/charge, USB/SPDIF coax/TOSLINK, and filter selection (that on the chip or John's awesome sounding software filter). The little slot behind that is where the optional sample rate display goes. That's a heat sink for the charging circuit at the left center, The screw heads in the middle hold the battery under the chassis, and I think the rest of the stuff is pretty self explanatory. Some of this may shift around and there will be one more slot for "accessories" to be determined in the future - that's why I say it's 90% like the finished version.

Good news is that it sounds quite good even with the charging circuit active. Great news is it sounds fabulous running off battery only. We are exploring the notion of a standby mode that keeps the board on and warmed up while the battery trickle charges, for those who like to keep their SS gear on all the time, and possibly a fast charge mode for those who are impatient and don't mind replacing the SLA battery more often.

Awesome.  There is a lot of space to vinyl wrap that chassis and be very creative.   I'm gonna start working on something now to the tune of 6 x 6.  Can't wait.

[2wo]

6X6, I like that. I was worried that I would need to find more room...John 

[pdxgrampa]

Looks like there might be an Order Acknowledgement in the Christmas Stocking this year

[Jim R.]

Yes, the size is nice and without the extra heat of a tube and power supply it leaves room for some experimentation with other plate materials such as CF or a tone wood.
-- Jim

[denti alligator]

Cool! Can't wait. Sounds like this could be the event of 2014.

A couple questions:

1) Is the height the same as all BH kits? Could it be made slower or is the space needed?

2) Would this cause any electronic interference issues with, say, another BH amp if it were placed too close?

[Doc B.]

Chassis is the same height as all others, because the DAC board hangs vertically in a shield box under the chassis.
As to interference, we get none in our setup. John took great pains to make a very quiet well shielded layout with very short signal paths.

[madbrayniak]

HOT DOG!

This is really getting me excited! and the idea of using the batteries is GENIUS! Simpler truely is better!

Now that I have been enjoying my Quickie for about a year Im wanting to change that over to a headphone amp and build a BeePree and one of these!

[John Swenson]

A couple days ago I was sick and couldn't get a couple brain cells together to do any work (like laying out boards for the Bottlehead DAC) and decided to move the prototype into the main listening system. This wasn't easy, the dac board itself is tiny, but I need the linear power supply for the DAC and the squeezebox (running the DAC off the coax S/PDIF out from the SBT). Since I had some time I decided to set all this up, got it running, queued up some music and almost fell on the floor. Up to this point I had just been listening with headphones in the lab, WOW I was blown away!

With good speakers and amp the sense of space just overwhelmed me, this was well beyond anything I had EVER heard before. I just sat down and listened for hours. The sense of being "pulled in" to the music was astonishing.

I put about 500 tracks on  the playlist, I just sat there enjoying the experience the rest of the evening, all night and the next morning. (I did get up to go to the bathroom, but that was it)

That was definitely the longest listening session I have ever had, and probably the most enjoyable. This DAC is really something special.

BTW it wasn't just because I was sick, that  is all gone and I still get that reaction to listening to it. But now I have to go back to work so I don't have much time to  listen anymore.

Thanks for being patient while we get this to you, it is definitely going to be  worth it.

John S.

[Jim R.]

John,

Very good news! At this point I have no more technical questions -- I don't feel any need to know any more technical details -- dac chip, output section, aasync, galvanic isolation, number of dac chips, etc. -- it's what comes out that matters and this sounds like something I'll just have to have in my system.

I was really impressed with the prototype that was at RMAF a few years back but it sounds like this is a whole different animal.

Sign me up!

Jim
 

[Doc B.]

Yes this is a different animal. I have the previous DAC, the second prototype based on PCM1704s that were were demoing this the past year in the listening room. It's really nice and we got a lot of nice complements about it. But the new DAC has such a black background and such a lack of electronic artifacts compared to anything else we have used that it is the one being used all the time now.

John's software digital filter plays a very big part in this. We have a switch on the DAC that allows you to use the hardware filter that is internal to the DAC or John's filter. The hardware filter is very good, but we were joking that the switch is a feature you will only use once.

[xcortes]

Just get rid of the switch. Even better, leave the switch to select John's filter or no filter at all!