R5 - just saying worth taking a look at it :)

Excellent stuff, I have been thinking of building a turntable, tell me about the cartridge arm & what's with the air hose in the wall?

How's the bass in the ESL's? Are they reconditioned? Iv'e heard some good things about them.

David

Probably because you don't have a pull-down or a pull-up resistor installed at "S" on the OTTO. This leads to unpredictable behavior.

+1 on that. I'm on record here somewhere having issues with no pull up/down resistors in the OTTO II. Switching was not immediate or it hung or stuck on one channel despite being switched back to the other. No issues at all using a pull up or down resistor.

Thanks for the kind words. The arm is an Advanced Analog MG-1. It is crude compared to the high priced Rockport’s and ET air arms, but effective at its job and reasonably priced ($599 new less air compressor, $280 for the Ultra arm). I bought it used with standard and Ultra arms which was even better deal. The noisy air compressor is mounted in the basement. The air line goes through the wall. I used a push-lock bulkhead fitting for a nice professional look and ease of disconnect. That fitting is mounted in a Cat5/phone jack wall plate. Not pictured is a combination air filter / expansion tank by my audio rack. An expansion tank smoothes the air pump pulses so the tonearm gets steady stream air pressure.

The cartridge is a Dynavector Karat 17D3. I also have a Denon 103R that I removed the plastic body from and installed an aluminum body. The Lenco is an excellent Swiss design but was placed in a cheap hollow plinth. A fellow named Jean Nantais started applying the same formula to the Lenco as the audiophile priced Garrard’s. Heavy plinths to absorb vibes from the high torque motor. Done right there isn’t an arm or cartridge you couldn’t mount on them. They drive through the most difficult grooves without slowing at all.

Speakers are Innersound MK III with the Ultrastat panels. Instead of powder coated stators, a high value dielectric material is cast over the stator grids. A CNC machine mills slots between the wire grids making them arc proof. Often times powder coating does hot adhere to sharp edges of the metal stators which could result in arcing. (Been there with metal stator ESL’s. Break the epoxy out and carefully apply to the bare areas without getting any on the ESL diaphragm).

Roger Sanders also came up with an embedded coating that does not wear off like some ESL panels. Result is no worries about insects, pet fur or humidity. Hybrid design means a custom long excursion 10" SEAS woofer resides in an 8 foot long folded transmission line bass module. A 600WPC @ 4 Ohm active crossover bass amp powers the woofer. A 720 WPC @ 4 Ohms Sanders amp powers the panels. Bass has slam and is sharp and articulate. They integrate very well with the panels. Bass and mid bass are adjustable on the active xover via front panel controls or remote control. These will play extremely loud if desired and sound great doing it.

Oh your definitely right. It will not work correctly unless 'S' is solidly pulled in one way or the other. :)

If I cant get the DAC to work reliably with my Arduino setup I'm may put the firmware chip back in & use the approach of my first DAC which was to have everything external.

With my DAC 1 about the only outstanding problem I had was getting the 4 way SPDIF to work properly, I was going to try lowering the voltage to the SPDIF as discussed elsewhere. I was wondering if I could just put a diode in series with the + from the Placid HD and use the voltage drop across the diode to lower the voltage to the 4 way SPDIF?

Thanks, I'll put that in the notebook.

Tomorrow I'm going to try installing a I2C isolator between the BIII & the Mega to see if it helps with the issues I'm having. The I2C line is the only electrical connection between them, if that doesn't work I might try a different PSU for the mega.

There is a ground in the level converter setup that links the BIII & Arduino, but other than that I don't have one at the moment, I'm sure I have tried an extra ground between the BIII main ground point & the Arduino main ground point previously and it had no effect.

Edited by user Friday, May 3, 2013 12:02:36 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Which isolator are you using? Can't read it from the picture.

I'm using the ADuM1250. This works perfect. Are you powering side 2 of the isolator from the DAC?