Visit from SCompRacer

agfrost

Had Rich over for a visit this afternoon--It's been a minute since he's come by to listen to tunes for a bit (perhaps since the Backert Labs Rhumba (tubed pre) demo tour* stopped by casa de Jay).

The festivities were slightly delayed by my bad scheduling abilities (had another friend over to install dishwasher after Lowe's "deliver and install" option last night turned into "we're dumping the box in your house, schedule another appointment with an installer next week"--We had a bite of lunch and headed down to listen.

Rich was happy that the Mitsubishi TT he worked so (so!) hard to get back up to snuff was functioning 100% for me. We listened to a recent vinyl purchase of mine, the recent 45rpm Analogue Productions release of INXS Kick; but we spent more time installing and listening to the toy Rich brought over--An excellent (!!) Twisted Pear dac build of his--I won't pretend to share the tech specs of it, but it's really 'wow' in my system--dynamic, spacious, and really engaging.

I was too busy stuffing my ears with music to take pictures, but I'll put in a couple Rich sent me:

Left SDA (currently waiting in the bullpen) functioning as a DAC platform for the day:



Haven't missed any chances to spam the forum with pics of the LT-30 lately:




I said it in the LT-30 thread recently but I'll repeat it here; I'm really appreciative of Rich, who's a lot of fun to listen to music with, and who has had a large impact on the composition of my rig! 'Twas a nice Friday leading into this holiday weekend!


* I'm still a *wee* bit bitter that I won the "name our preamp, win the preamp" contest but did not, in fact, win the preamp!

pitdogg2

Way to go guy's. We should try to hatch up a plan for a get together, You, Aaron, Rich, maybe Dave any others up that way to meet up some weekend. Better yet we could go beat on Brocks door and demand a session to hear all 12 of the watts sitting on his desk. Shoot didn't he get some new gear and speakers? Well do tell......
😜😜😂😂😂😂

agfrost

pitdogg2 wrote: »

we could go beat on Brocks door and demand a session to hear all 12 of the watts sitting on his desk.

That'd be, like, one watt for each of us! I call the "First Watt".

msg

Wait, that Twisted Pear thing is still around?!?

So it's no longer mounted on an old kitchen cupboard door like @ALL212 had it on?

Sounds like an awesome hang guys. Good stuff, and that Mitsubishi is looking awesome!

pitdogg2

agfrost wrote: »

pitdogg2 wrote: »

we could go beat on Brocks door and demand a session to hear all 12 of the watts sitting on his desk.

That'd be, like, one watt for each of us! I call the "First Watt".

I'll make sure you get the WHOOOLE watt! I got you!

SCompRacer

Good times Jay! It was nice seeing the LT-30 again, behaving! It sure had me going. My old Krell. You....

Aaron had my old Twisted Pear ES9018 DAC. Jay has the newer Twisted Pear ES9038Pro DAC. Carl had this one after me. The 9038Pro had eight individual DACs that you could parallel into four per channel which multiplies current output. That significantly improves the Signal-to-Noise Ratio and dynamic range compared to the 9028.

Twisted Pear is no longer in biz. They had a fantastic implementation of the 9038Pro. Current output, all seven filters available, a Mercury I/V stage that solved the balanced common mode DC issue (no coupling cap needed) of their previous I/V card, quiet power supplies. This one had a second Twisted Pear HD BP PS (Bipolar, +15vdc, -15vdc) at one time. One for each channel.

I could never get Arduino with display to work with the 9038Pro like I did with my first dual mono Twisted Pear DAC and Carl's 9018 DAC. That's why there is so much open real estate in chassis that Jay can rent out. I had also planned for multiple inputs like my first DAC. This one has a JLsounds I2S over USB module. USB is isolated.



My first DIY was a Twisted Pear dual mono with remote control using that little Apple remote. Choose inputs, filters, settings. I modded a Squeezebox Touch for I2S and a Denon DVD-3910 for I2S and DSD out to the DAC. Carl's 9018 DAC had remote control too.

Keiko

Nice audio p-r-0-n Jay. Beats PIE all day long. After what I've just been thru, I'm done with pie and have sworn to celibacy.

Pie's da stink0wiff. Audio is where it's at!

agfrost

Keiko wrote: »

Nice audio p-r-0-n Jay. Beats PIE all day long. After what I've just been thru, I'm done with pie and have sworn to celibacy.

Pie's da stink0wiff. Audio is where it's at!

Thanks, Mike! It's nice to see you around--Wishing you the best as you venture forward.

ALL212

@SCompRacer corrupted me. I’ve got two of those twisted pear things. Both sound amazing.

The light version: I upgraded the base from a kitchen cupboard cabinet base only because @msg kept laughing at it. 😢


The heavy version:

SCompRacer

The old Twisted Pear implementations still sound good. Russ White paid attention to power supplies, DAC power regulation and IV output boards to make a great sounding combo. He was impressed with my Swiss army knife, Arduino I2S with remote control, all inputs known to man with headphone out dual mono DAC. I created a shortage of Twisted Pear power supplies and transformers with that build....lol

Is that the ES9028 in the big one?

I still have the Arduino DUE (x2) and a couple DimDim shields that I couldn't get to work with the 9038Pro. DimDim, from Greece, (his nic but actually not Dim at all) had a Twisted Pear ES9018 DAC that the chip went bad on. He hot air swapped an ES 9038 DAC chip on the 9018 board (not easy!), designed the interface shield and wrote the code including using Apple remote.

The new 9038Pro board from Twisted Pear required a register reset after power on. He had that written into the firmware chip. I could not duplicate it with hardware or by modifying code in the Arduino. It was a big failure on my part. I'm only 66 and 2/3% effective, or 2 for 3, with Arduino!

ALL212

Is that the ES9028 in the big one?

Whatever the last biggest implementation was is in the big one.

I don’t remember who’s in the little one.

SCompRacer

ES9018.

heiney9

pitdogg2 wrote: »

Way to go guy's. We should try to hatch up a plan for a get together, You, Aaron, Rich, maybe Dave any others up that way to meet up some weekend. Better yet we could go beat on Brocks door and demand a session to hear all 12 of the watts sitting on his desk. Shoot didn't he get some new gear and speakers? Well do tell......
😜😜😂😂😂😂

Aaron (ALL212) lives just down the street from me too. I can host a few guys at some point in the future. The rig isn't totally dialed in and my room treatment idea's are a ways off.....but I have two rigs running.

I have a single listening sweet spot everyone can fight over.

A Fall gtg might work.

H9

SCompRacer

My two channel had a small sweet spot with the flat panel electrostatic speakers! Use an old wind-up kitchen timer for sweet spot time...

Aaron, my bad, those both look like Pro boards, check at rear corner. IIRC the 9028 and 9038 used the same PCB. You had to look at the chip for specifics. Both were good, the 9038 had more torque.

Either way, Twisted Pear made all seven filters available on both. Not all manufacturers offered access to all the DAC chips options.

Fast roll-off, linear phase
Slow roll-off, linear phase
Fast roll-off, minimum phase
Slow roll-off, minimum phase
Apodizing fast roll-off, linear phase
Hybrid fast roll-off, minimum phase
Brickwall