PICS: Sound card DAC / Spaghetti problems

yep that's what I meant by voltage level adjustments.. every other DAC has this little bit of soft. in fact, I wonder if the EasyLase one would work 8/

I have never even used the EasyLase one... didn't even know one existed. As I have said before, I am going to be removing the drivers from Spaghetti and will create driver packs. This app would be something useful to include. We should probably talk off line about this if you are interested. The idea would be that they install the EzAud driver seperately and it would be picked up by Spaghetti. Additionally, there would be a config app on the Start Menu that allows setting up the channels and stuff that you have in your ini file. And, the little voltage config tool could also be included in this same program group.

ElektroFreak said:

On your correction amp, there seem to be 3 missing capacitors around that transistor near the correction amp inputs...

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I think I didn't put those on because the paper instructions that DrLava sends with the correction amp said the 3 caps aren't needed. I'm not sure I made that thing so long ago.

Sorry I haven't updated much in this thread, I'm working 84 hours this week at my real job... 7 night shifts in a row. I don't have much time to do anything but work and sleep. I'll do some work on the sound card DAC probably next week.

thanks everyone,
Kendall

no, it does need caps, but there were surface mount caps supplied to solder to the bottom of the board, that's why you don't see them.

drlava said:

no, it does need caps, but there were surface mount caps supplied to solder to the bottom of the board, that's why you don't see them.

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gotcha that was it. They are underneath it.

It seems the DMX board is auto switching, however it may rely on the interlock signal for this. Since the sound card DAC doesn't have the interlock signal, it may not be switching.

@Gary, Yes I know, however it would be extremely cheap (My figures say around <$50) if someone was to make them, and sell them as completed devices. It would be cheap, and prebuilt, for the people that don't know electronics, and don't want to spend much.

Things said:

@Gary, Yes I know, however it would be extremely cheap (My figures say around <$50) if someone was to make them, and sell them as completed devices. It would be cheap, and prebuilt, for the people that don't know electronics, and don't want to spend much.

Click to expand...

Not sure about $50 unless you work for free and don't want to make a profit.

carmangary said:

Not sure about $50 unless you work for free and don't want to make a profit.

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I calculated out how much it was to make my Sound Card DAC and so far its $117.

the laser boy controller amp was like $45 itself.

sound card, $22.

db25 breakout board $12.50

and I paid too much for a DB25 cable cause I couldn't find it at Radioshack so I bought it online and got express shipping. ($30 for that)

^Your figure wouldn't be indicative of what that DAC would cost if you bought a second one and built it. Now you know how it's supposed to go (mostly) and you know where you could save costs. If you were a manufaturing firm, you would be in the rresearch and diagnostic phase, which is always more expensive because you're learning. The soundcard DAC should cost about $80 for the hardware to build it (amp, sound card, breakout board[optional]), all cabling is always an added expense. Now that you know this, it would likely cost you less if you built it again for whatever reason.

That's why a commercial offering that was very very basic might only cost $50 after it was fully developed, but Gary's right that there is no room for profit in that number. I'd say $100 is about the cheapest you'll ever see in a commercial DAC (ishow not included because it's crap).

Come up with a board design and firmware and farm out production to China and I'll bet you can have complete DACs for under $100 or close to it. In the future I plan on looking into this but it will be awhile.