Bottlehead DAC prototyping takes another step forward

[Doc B]

Woo hoo! The new boards arrived today! John and will be talking over the next few weeks and getting this new prototype up and running in the system.

 

[Natural Sound]

Woo hoo! The new boards arrived today! John and will be talking over the next few weeks and getting this new prototype up and running in the system.

Sweet, good things come to those who wait.

.

 

[Wormwood]

Doc,

It's going to be portable, right?

Looking forward to seeing how it all shakes down.



Stephen

 

[tdogzthmn]

Are there any progress images of the DAC in it's current iteration?  I saw/heard an early prototype at last years bay area meet but wasn't able to see the internals.   

 

[Paul Birkeland]

At this point, we ordered the iron for the new power supply for the new PCB's.  We are just about wrapped up and ready to ship Bee Pres, and once we are over that hill, it will be all hands on deck to wrap up the remaining work to be done on the DAC (though we can't do much without the power supply at this point).

-PB

 

[Chris]

"Are there any progress images of the DAC in it's current iteration?"  Uhh, I think Wormwood provided the photo of the Dac....  Doc was so thorough in the design that he even included the kitchen pan.... He tried the "kitchen sink" , but found it would dramatically increase the shipping charges so chose to go with the pan....... And the "included" blanket is due to the fact you will be so much in love with the sound, you are provided with the option to be able to sleep with it....... I believe anyway......

 

[tdogzthmn]

I was thinking a nice future upgrade for the DAC would be network connectivity. That would be quite useful for those running their music off severs in a different location from their music system. The Raspberry Pi would make a nice and affordable Linux computer which could be built into the DAC. Just a thought.

 

[Doc B]

Just a quick update - power supply components are on hand and the design team is working on the physical layput of the DAC today.

 

[Natural Sound]

[quote author=tdogzthmn]The Raspberry Pi would make a nice and affordable Linux computer which could be built into the DAC. Just a thought.[/quote]

I'm using a Raspberry PI with Raspian (Debian Linux) as a NFS file sharing computer and a PC Engines ALIX computer as an MPD client. The Raspberry Pi is an amazing little computer for $35.

http://cheap-silent-usb-linux-music-server.blogspot.com/

 

[tdogzthmn]

Doc, Glad to hear things are moving again on this project!

 

[earwaxxer]

This is truly exciting, from different perspectives. DAC's are a 'white hot' audiophile item these days. If Bottlehead can get peoples attention in this arena it would be a HUGE move. Not an easy task with the Schiit, Audio-gd, Halide, Metrum, Empirical Audio, M2Tech, Wadia, April Music, Wyred, CEntrance, Audiophilio, Peachtree, Mhdt, MYTEK, Sotm, Hiface, JK, Twisted Pair, Burson, Eastern Electric, Lamizator, Pacific Valve, DAC Magic, JDS .... well, you get the idea. No pressure!

 

[Paul Birkeland]

I have a good chassis layout drawn electronically, but one datasheet for a physical part that has not arrived has some anomalies, so we'll be hanging on for a day or two until that pops in before ordering the next prototype plate. 

 

[tdogzthmn]

Paul, any chance I can get a copy of the chassis layout?  I'm interested in making a custom enclosure out of milled Aluminum and a parts layout would be helpful for me.  PM me if you can help, thanks.

 

[Paul Birkeland]

That's always up to Doc B., and I'd expect a few tweaks to happen between this prototype and the production prototype, especially with the jack field. 

 

[Doc B]

No, sorry, we are not ready to share any files for this product. We don't even know for sure if it will work they way we hope it will.