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xcortes · 188860

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Offline denti alligator

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Reply #270 on: January 23, 2014, 12:01:21 PM
$849

Available for pre-order May 25.

- Sam

Rega P3-24 (w/AT 150MLX) w/Groovetracer upgrades / Eros II / FLAC >J.River >DSD256 >Gustard X20 / Moreplay > Stereomour II / Klipsch Forte II w/Crites upgrades / C4S S.E.X. 2.0 +Nickel MQ Iron / Speedball Crack / Sennheiser HD600 w/Cardas cable


Offline Alonzo

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Reply #271 on: January 23, 2014, 12:10:33 PM
$945,  preorders 13 March

Alonzo
Gameroom:>Mainline to HD820, SR45 to Pipette
>BeePree Kaiju & SII to Altec 19 knockoffs
Office:>BH Stat amp to Koss 95x, T20 SET to JBL 4309s
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Offline saildoctor

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Reply #272 on: January 23, 2014, 05:53:55 PM
April 1st  ;)  $750

Kerry Sherwin

45 Paramounts, 6SN7 Extended FPIII, OC3 regulated Seduction
Blumenstein Orca Deluxe / 2x Orca Subs
VPI Classic / ADC CD-100x


Offline Grainger49

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Reply #273 on: January 24, 2014, 12:13:36 AM
May 1, $999.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2014, 09:47:56 AM by Grainger49 »



Offline mcandmar

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Reply #274 on: January 24, 2014, 12:29:47 AM
I was going to say $250, pre order 1st April :P

$900, pre-order 3rd March

M.McCandless


Offline ALL212

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Reply #275 on: January 24, 2014, 02:32:19 AM
$929, preorder April 15th.

Aaron Luebke


Offline Superdad

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Reply #276 on: January 27, 2014, 02:30:02 PM
Hello everyone:
My first post here.  My name is Alex Crespi, and I am the friend that John Swenson spoke of above.  John and I have known each other for about 9 years.  I first contacted him for an ahead-of-its-time digital project back in 2005--when Hovland Company, of which I was a co-founder, was still in operation.  In fact the DAC which the Bottlehead prototype went up against on Janaury 4th is one of the NOS PCM1704K prototypes with discrete output stage that I inherited when Hovland closed its doors.  It has had work done to it since: John put in a WaveIO async-USB>I2S board and better power supplies for the digital side.  (If you want to know more about me or my system, I use the same Superdad handle over at ComputerAudiophile.com)

My custom room and system are pretty advanced, and I upsample Redbook to 176.4KHz with Audirvana Plus on a fine-tuned Mac mini booting a very slim OS off an SD card.  I have spent a lot of time tweaking all the filter parameters of the iZotope SRC engine that A+ uses, so I have a good ear for what the parameters do.  John's visit to my place this month (I'm about a 3 hour drive each way) was not his first, and we have spent time tuning a filter for a PCM5142 (the chip in the forthcoming BH DAC) before.  It is amazing what a custom digital filter can do for an otherwise ordinary sounding DAC chip.  The filters in most all other DACs are terribly compromised--especially if they are only the ones within the chip as the resources are terribly constrained.  But the FPGA designed into this unit you have all been waiting for has plenty of room to load and run a really good filter.

At first we listened to the BH DAC fed by my Mac mini (both with iZotope upsampling and with that off to listen to the filter John already had in the BH FPGA).  Power was provided by a prototype of a new PS that John and I will be producing in the next few months.  The BH sounded pretty good.

John has techniques to output a list of filter coefficients from the excellent SoX sample rater converter--and to then load those into the FPGA.  So what we did then was run SlimServer and SqueezePlayer on a Wandboard under COS (a customized Linux that the folks involved in the Community Squeeze Project have created--John is chief hardware designer for that non-profit project), and used the SoX plug-in to upsample to 352.8/384KHz (that rate turns off the PCM5142's own filter, and John turned off his FPGA filter).  The filter already in the FPGA was based on some of the intermediate SoX parameters, but was not critically tuned to this DAC.  The parameters are: cut-off, pre-ring/post-ring balance (that's the range of minimum-phase to linear-phase), filter length (that's number of virtual "taps"), steepness (for SoX this is controlled by frequency of cut-off and final cut, if I recall correctly).

Anyway, once we deciphered the numbers and ranges to enter the parameters (on an ugly command line for the SoX plug-in), we were able to spend about 90 minutes with the same four VERY revealing tracks (real instruments, real spaces, very challenging material top to bottom).  We went one parameter at a time, bracketing wide, then narrow, until we were making the smallest possible adjustments.  It is an iterative process (meaning we sometimes came back to one parameter after tuning another) and somewhat tedious, but John's ears, my system, and my 40 years as an audiophile/music lover (I started when I was 12) made it pretty easy.

In the end we were both grinning like fools.  Really that DAC chip (and its built-in opamp output stage) had no right to sound as good as it did.  Cymbals, piano, voices, strings, bass, drums--all top of the mark.  I have heard a lot of DACs, and I am convinced this Bottlehead DAC will go toe-to-toe with some mega-buck units!  Of course John quickly wrote down the numbers for the magic parameters we had settled upon and he's converting them for loading onto the FPGA.

So Doc, I think you'd best mark me down for a Bottlehead DAC too!  (I don't mind coming after everyone else here who have waited so patiently.)

Anyway, I just though you might all enjoy a little insight into the final stage of what is going to be a GREAT and very musical DAC.  It would be a steal even at twice the price of whatever Doc ends up asking for it.  Based on what I heard with my own ears, I don't think ANYBODY will be disappointed.

Best regards,

ALEX
« Last Edit: January 27, 2014, 02:35:23 PM by Superdad »



Offline pdxgrampa

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Reply #277 on: January 27, 2014, 03:15:45 PM

WOW!

Greg
Music Hall 5.1SE,EROS. OPPO 980HD, Music Hall 25.3 Dac. BeePre/BeeQuiet. Paramount V1.1 300B,Orca Deluxe W/ Subs/SPA250s.Stereomour W/Orca Deluxe. Crack W/Speeball(2) .Beyerdynamic 990s.Crackheadphone.


Offline Brillo

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Reply #278 on: January 27, 2014, 05:19:24 PM
Yeah. Word. Really amazing to get these insights into how much time, effort, patience, and dedication to quality has been put forth on this product development.  Pretty cool stuff.

Chris


Offline Jim R.

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Reply #279 on: January 28, 2014, 05:42:55 AM
Hi Alex,

Thanks so much for this added information and impressions.

One thing that has not been mentioned so far is how this dac does on tone -- in other words, where does it sit on the tone color scale. More to the Linn side or more to the audio note side?

Thanks,

Jim

Jim Rebman -- recovering audiophile

Equitech balanced power; uRendu, USB processor -> Musette DAC -> 5670 tube buffer -> Finale Audio F138 FFX -> Cain and Cain Abbys near-field).

s.e.x. 2.1 under construction.  Want list: Stereomour II

All ICs homemade (speaker and power next)


Offline pdxgrampa

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Reply #280 on: January 28, 2014, 08:32:13 AM
     

               Question for John S:

           How do you prototype these days?
           
    When we were doing it (a long time ago) it was Augat wire wrap boards with DIP spacing for mostly 74XX logic parts . You could debug fairly effectively with a hand held Logic Probe.

             Seems that there is a totally different methodology required with what's available today.

Greg
Music Hall 5.1SE,EROS. OPPO 980HD, Music Hall 25.3 Dac. BeePre/BeeQuiet. Paramount V1.1 300B,Orca Deluxe W/ Subs/SPA250s.Stereomour W/Orca Deluxe. Crack W/Speeball(2) .Beyerdynamic 990s.Crackheadphone.


Offline John Swenson

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Reply #281 on: January 28, 2014, 08:54:06 AM
Wire wrap and approaches like that are long gone. The only decent way is to have custom boards made. There are some places that do this fairly inexpensively. For simple stuff you can do your own, but for the boards I do now, it's cheaper to send them out.

The fun part is soldering. I have a hot air station, microscope and some other tools which allow me to hand solder many SMD parts, but there are some that are very difficult to do that way. The main Bottlehead board is a board that is almost impossible to solder by hand, so the only way to do it is have a professional assembly shop do it. There are lots of these around, but none of them are cheap. There are some that specialize in prototype work and I use one of those. So I send off board files, XY files and BOM files, Doc sends them a big chunk of money and  a few weeks later we get finished boards.

I then test them out, find problems, and hack the boards up, cutting traces, adding tiny little wires etc, all dome under the microscope.  I get it working, then go through the process again to hack up one for Doc and send it to him. Thus all the boards he has had so far have a certain amount of red wires and cut traces. 

The ones in the fab right now have all the hacks from the last version incorporated into the board and hopefully will work out of the box.

John S.

John Swenson
DAC designer
Well Tempered Record player -> Seduction
Moded Squeezebox->DIY DAC
BDT preamp->813 monster SE amp
DIY "Bazooka" Lowther speakers


Offline pdxgrampa

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Reply #282 on: January 28, 2014, 10:40:45 AM
     
      Thanks John,
   
     I thought that was probably the case.
     I guess the wire wrap gun goes to the re-cycler. :)

Greg
Music Hall 5.1SE,EROS. OPPO 980HD, Music Hall 25.3 Dac. BeePre/BeeQuiet. Paramount V1.1 300B,Orca Deluxe W/ Subs/SPA250s.Stereomour W/Orca Deluxe. Crack W/Speeball(2) .Beyerdynamic 990s.Crackheadphone.


Offline tdogzthmn

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Reply #283 on: January 30, 2014, 02:38:13 PM
Doc, I'd be interested in hearing your impression's on how the DAC sounds through the Orca speakers if you've had a chance to listen through them.  My pair are just starting to really hit their stride and I'm looking to see if a new DAC will improve their sound. 



Offline Doc B.

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Reply #284 on: January 30, 2014, 02:56:20 PM
I have had the new DAC in the big system so far, so I haven't heard it with the Orcas. But I have a previous DAC prototype running in our home theater and after hooking it up I just couldn't go back to the analog output of the bluray player. So I can't say if you will like the new DAC, but I am confident that you could hear a difference compared to other sources.

Dan "Doc B." Schmalle
President For Life
Bottlehead Corp.