Tag Mclaren.

Well it is only going to be sending a digital output. Colouration and so on? are all down to the OPAMPs and so on. IE, the circuitry that converts it from a digital signal into something you can hear in analogue. Which will all be done by the AV32. So I have no doubt it will be as flat and neutral as it gets.
 
Well the whole thing will be grounded, so I would say no. I also have a power conditioner the entire stereo plugs into and a couple of surge protectors too.

TBH the only ground loop issues I ever had were all at my old flat. And by old? it had 1940s Bakelite switches. And the worst offenders? spinning hard drives. Like you could literally hear them through the audio signal spinning up.
 
No my old flat was falling apart. It has since been condemned. Let me see if I can find an example for you...

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The wiring was pretty much untouched since the 60s. The whole place was falling apart, and a complete dump. I wrapped the kitchen when I moved in because she found it in a skip, finished it myself and painted it. Within 6 months it looked like this.

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See how the light is hanging off the ceiling? I had to cook wearing my BMX helmet. The inner cupboard ceiling collapsed.

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She then tried to up the rent by £80, which I refused to pay until she had the place made safe. It was giving me constant chest infections and etc. So she served me a section 21. So, I called environmental services who then condemned it. I then filed two lawsuits against her, both of which I won. Ironically she paid for two of the amps and the £1800 speakers I have up front lmao.
 
BTW as for karma? she could not get the condemnation lifted, as much as she tried. It was repossessed by the mortgage company and still sits empty nearly 5 years later. Someone smashed all of the front windows (not me, the guy upstairs didn't like her much either) and it went to auction three years ago with a starting price of 70k. No one bid, because it needs 100k spending on it. IE, ripping back to a shell, fixing the outside issues causing the damp, a new gas box outside and god knows what else. It is worth 140k if you are lucky, so as you can see no one wants it.

So it just sits empty, as I left it.
 
I had to put ground loop isolators on every sound producing device in the flat. 3 pcs, three headphone amps and god knows what else. Which left it all sounded flat and a bit muffled.

Been doing some more poking. People are using them on better setups than mine. I guess like me they don’t buy snake oil and ain’t stupid. Especially when all it’s doing is shoving out 1s and 0s. I don’t see any way of ever improving that tbh. Eveeywhere you can make slight differences? They’re on it charging thousands of pounds.

I’m not an audiophile. At all. That’s why I love TMC. Because they make brutally flat non EQ stuff. Meaning when I listen to anything it’s how it should sound. So if it sounds crap? It is crap. That’s all I ever wanted hence buying parts that are up to 20 years old now.

But when someone does sound good like when Thom Yorke sang fake plastic trees live in a studio? Dear god things get emotional fast.
 
OK so one last bit for the sound part.

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It's a USB isolator. Also stops power spikes and etc. Good thing is it has a switch to turn it on and off, so I can see if it causes any sound degradation. It shouldn't because it has a proper Analogue Devices chip on it.

I've also ordered another A3 sheet of acrylic. Mainly for the small pieces I will need, and the PSU cap (will explain that at a later date, no point now I can't design it until I have the PSU to measure).
 
Well at £4 I couldn't see any reason not to :D

I have decided on the OS. Seems absolutely perfect. It's called LibreELEC and I think it is a tiny Linux with Kodi in it. So it boots straight into Kodi, which should immediately just use the remote I bought. Did a bit of research and Kodi can indeed play DVDs, so it should just be a case of pointing it to my server and yeah, job done.

I also read that VLC ignores the region on a DVD drive. Like, you can open any DVD in it without switching regions. Hopefully Kodi is the same, but I will need to check into that. Either way I have no UK DVDs at least not here. There are a few at mum's I wouldn't mind watching, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if I can't.
 
That is what I used to run. I had Win 10 slimmed down as much as possible, with all icons removed and it booting straight into a skinned VLC. The problem was it does not work with a remote (so I had to have a horrid little kbm trackpad thing that is awful) and Windows continually interrupted me with nags about updating and so on. Nothing like turning it on to play some music and it then spends over 30 mins doing updates you don't want or need. Or every few months making you refuse to let it have access to everything again.

That is also what I use on my FireTV for streaming video and listening to music. Though for music it leaves a lot to be desired.
 
piggin said:
Can can see windows notifications being an issue when you are listening to a good piece of music or watching a film :cry:

As for the fire stick, I have never used it just for music so couldn't comment but from what you are saying I will give that a miss
Click to expand...

I have the Fire Cube. It's way more beefy. I used to buy sticks, but every year or two they start to crawl. The Cube has been going for 4 years at this point, and is still very fast and nippy. I use that to watch SmartTubeNext which blocks ads, sponsors and even subscribe reminders. I used to watch the ads, but YT started getting greedy and pushing me to stop it. Was bad enough before, but 30 second unskippable ads over and over got on my nerves. I also use it to watch Prime, and the channels I am subbed to on there.

OK so I figured out what OS I am going to use a couple of days back. It's called LibreElec and is basically, from what I can see, a type of Linux that is shaved down to almost nothing and boots straight into Kodi. Problem is I have never used Kodi. I thought it was just a way to pirate and steal, so I figured I should install it on my Fire stick first to see if it does what I need.

What a wally. I've been using VLC, which is incredibly basic and old fashioned as a front end.

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Took me literally two minutes to access my server and be playing music. And, it does not have the audio issues that VLC does on high res flac. Obviously that will be less of an issue on a PC with a better sound device, but still. Apparently if you have a drive installed (DVD BR etc) a disc icon appears on the side and yeah, it will play DVDs too.

Sorted.
 
No.

A stick doesn't have a DVD drive. It is also not working on the TV side of things, freezing loading the PVR at 0%.

I mean, theoretically yes you can use a stick, but you give up a ton of features. It doesn't do anything more than VLC on the same stick does for me now. I mean yeah, it looks way nicer but I need a CD/DVD drive as well.
 
Yeah the Amazon stick isn’t perfect. It has to side load and I know from doing that with my blackberry phones in the past it didn’t work too well.

You could use a pi4 I hear. You can even buy an audiophile DAC for a pi4 for £130 or so. Problem is can you hook a dvd player to that without buying more expensive addons? Who knows. And at the end of being done in the botty over pi4 prices? You would have a multi box and drive rat nest.

I got my board and ram free. It demolished a PI4 in every shape and form.

Remember, most of this was free. The shell of the CD player cost me £45 and was by far the most expensive piece. I didn’t even have to buy the alcohol or paint and I have loads of that left AND etc primer

Most of the touch ups I did on the face plate wore off when I was working on it. 100% because I should have put etch down first. I’ll cover the methods when the face comes back. I’ll get it out to G over the weekend.

Cool thing is hopefully my light diffuser will be done and can be shipped back with it.
 
OK just got over. Tested what I can, PSU seems to work fine. Wee bit noisy though so I got this coming tomorrow.

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I would have ordered it before, but I wasn't sure whether it was 10mm or 20. Turns out it is 20.
 
OK. So today I took the new used DVD drive apart, modded the power button again and sorted the LED.

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I could immediately tell the side rails were thinner. Few measurements later proved this point. It was pretty much the same width as the opening. Which is sort of good but not good. As such when you put the drive in it likes to get stuck. Once lined up to the .mm? it works, but good luck ever getting the drive mounted right in that position. So I filed out the opening. Given it didn't need much I put on my brave big boy pants and yeah, filed it out. I then finished up the drive mod.

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And that is ready to go.

G - I don't need you to machine anything now. I mean duh, obviously. What I would like, pretty please, is the printed LED box.
 
OK so today I was going to be doing the floor. Note - was.

I realised that Houston had a problem last night.

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I wondered where the strange 2 pin only cable came from a few weeks ago when it refused to go into a PC power supply. *sigh*.

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Just one problem. The socket I have (left over from a case) is too wide. So I need to file that down.

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With that out of the way I did something a bit more fun.

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No. I love machining marks. I have decided not to go nuts on detail on the inside. What's the point? I will see it a few times, then never seen it ever again lol.

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Done.

The Noctua is out for delivery, so later on I will sort that and finish the connector wire inside. Will get the floor in tomorrow with any luck.
 
The mobo is passive. It draws next to no power, probably less than the original CD unit in total. Hence I think even the fan in the PSU is overkill.

So getting that socket shaved down has sliced my fingers to pieces. I could not find the body of the stanley knife so I did it with the blade only. As such most of it is covered in blood now. Also, I snapped a bit earlier and then the part let go. So not off to the best starts.

Pleased to report it continued.

The fan came. They include this thing you connect to the connector for the original fan. They give you these press clips, I didn't like that idea so I soldered it.

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Lots of messing around later.

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And.

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NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNot.

Jumped the pins and the fan just sat there juddering. Totally refusing to spin at all. This worried me, as this is an incredibly small PSU. So I plugged the soldering iron back in, at which point the entire end of it decided to fall out and burn a massive hole in my rug. Pulled it out with some pliers, took the entire ******g PSU apart again and hacked into a 12v line.

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What an absolute ball ache.
 
Evening session turned out to be far better. First job was sort the wifi.

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I braided the power button in last night's evening session. Haven't put on any shrink at the button end yet, as I don't know if the button will need to come out.

I then modified both ends of the old power connector from an ITX case thing. The goal here was to have it use as little space as possible.

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Mission accomplished on that then.

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Hopefully it will have a floor in it tomorrow.
 
Yeah I am praying I am over the cursed hump.

I think the problem here was I thought it was going to be easy. Failing to realise that it would actually be extremely challenging, as I have not seen any one do it before. I missed a pic. This is what I did in order to extract every last mm of space.

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Took some bravery that. One slip and the whole lot is a goner. But yeah, as I start to see stuff going in I know for a fact I will be crying out for space as it goes on. Both the SSD and sound solutions need to live in front of the PSU.

Talking of which. I bought that USB to digital thing at a higher price expecting it to be here faster. All these days later and it has not even shipped. Looks like I am being ghosted. Need to wait a few more days before I can apparently get a refund, but obviously I wanted the sodding part. So I found another one at £6 shipped, so I have ordered a backup plan.

But yeah, this evening things took a turn for the better. I also realised looking at the photos that the PSU is filled with Nichicon audio grade caps, so that was nice.
 
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