A power supply for the Squeezebox

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ed
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#76

Post by ed »

Dave the bass wrote:Ditto, I wouldn't be worried Nick, a lot of us have known you for a while now and your advice has helped a lot of people get off the starting blocks and get making 'stuff' themselves which has been much appreciated.

DTB
don't you start defending him young bass. Bluddy bloke introduced me to single ended shenanigins.....the rocky road to ruin.. sassenfrassencursinfrassenclaudehopper!!
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Nick
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#77

Post by Nick »

Yep, the biggest pain with the 60p ones is getting good size wire out of the plastic cover.
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Dave the bass
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#78

Post by Dave the bass »

Nick wrote:Yep, the biggest pain with the 60p ones is getting good size wire out of the plastic cover.
Yeah, I've had that trouble with some of the gauge cabling the manufacturers use on the charger units too. What I've resorted to is cutting off the flimsy strain relief 'webbing' that are incorporated into the plastic cover design which often allows a larger dia cable to be used but use heat-shrink sleeving to mechanically couple the cable to the plug. They seem to last well, even in up in the labs where they're used day-in day-out.

DTB
"The fat bourgeois and his doppelganger"
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#79

Post by Dave the bass »

ed wrote:
don't you start defending him young bass. Bluddy bloke introduced me to single ended shenanigins.....the rocky road to ruin.. sassenfrassencursinfrassenclaudehopper!!
Me too Bruv!

"an' I got it baaaaaad"!

DTB
"The fat bourgeois and his doppelganger"
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#80

Post by Neal »

pre65 wrote:
Ali Tait wrote:I doubt anyone that knows you would think that Nick.
I agree. :)
Absolutely, I agree as well, it was the use of 'adequate' that intrigued me. I was just curious.
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#81

Post by Neal »

Funny how you can overlook the simplest of things yet they can have the biggest impact. I've been running an original SB1 since 2005 (I think) as a pure transport. Its very easy to mod to get a good performance, it responds well to an external power supply upgrade and re-clock but it has bugs and lacks features.

So I thought I'd `upgrade' to an SBII, bring it up-to-date (!) as I had a spare kicking about. Applied the same mods as the SB1 including SPDIF Tx and impedance cct, reclock etc. But the sound quality was not as good. Very forward, bright and hard...not nice.

SBII has a more complicated power scheme with a number of onboard switching supplies, as I wasn't using the DAC or analogue section I started disabling bits of it! Along with removing the wireless board... I also used the SPDIF re-clock feature of my Tent Labs X03 and fitted a better quality VCXO to it...still not there, too bright, too forward, hard. So I disabled the internal 14v switching supply and promptly killed the network...bum, this supply supposedly only feeds the DAC and analogue ccts but it appears to also feed a linear 3.3v reg (from the 5v one) that seemingly powers something on the Ethernet side and yet there's a separate 3.3v cct fed by another switching supply that feeds the HCU04 hex inverter...why not use the same one...

Anyhow, I pulled out the now unused Pulse Tx and took the SPDIF feed to the X03 directly from the Xylinx chip instead of the HCU04, re-enabled the 14v supply and the sound improved....a bit better I suppose but nothing to right home about. So, just as I was about to give up and go back to the SB1 I found an old ALW super reg in the parts box set for 12v. I knocked up a quick power supply from an old Tx and plugged the ALWSR into the SB instead of the internal 14v. Bingo!

Astonishing, all the brightness, glare and hard forward nature vanished....I'm really surprised it could have this much affect....especially as I'm not using the analogue stage so it shouldn't matter, the HCU04 is `out of cct' as I'm tapping the SPDIF before it so only benefit is something on the wired networking side...I'll have to trace where this 3.3v feed goes to...the sound is a step forward form the old SB MK1 as well, subtle but better. Will bring to Owston.
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