jezz

If you can do with 3, I'd think OSH Park would work really well--probably $15-$20 for the size.

I believe that's a "3607T" case. They've been popping up on the various Chinese exporters lately (eBay has some, aliexpress, etc.).

Mine made it through customs and arrived in Boston on Friday. Thanks!

Thanks Lil' Knight! Because the spreadsheet is open to anonymous edit and I haven't sent you money before, can you confirm your email address? I'd hate to send money to some jerk who changed the spreadsheet.

Antek is selling recovered/salvaged transformers on their eBay store for around 10% off full price.

Actually, I'm pretty sure none of that is OEM. From the redeemer: An interesting breakdown of various USB chargers can be found here, of note documenting the differences between a fake Apple charger and a real one. After reading that, I've started avoiding the fakes (available for pennies on eBay)--they scare me now.

I designed these for a similar need a while ago but ended up not using them (SOT-223 and DPAK PNP transistors are somewhat layout-compatible). Probably wouldn't cost much to make in great quantity--also probably has some layout defects, because at the time I was thinking "oh, what if I slapped a heatsink on these?"

Thanks for the info. I've got a 100W XYtronic which I've never had problems with. I was more wondering about how newbie-friendly this was supposed to be, though it makes sense that the Stax Mafia would put a good iron in every newbie's hands.

On the power supply, I'm a little nervous about how close the 7912 output trace to the terminal block is to the heatsink mounting hole. Also, did you intend to ground the FET heatsinks? On the amp, all of the ground solder pads aren't split up to slow down the heat dissipation, so they'll suck to solder to on that size of a board.

I just bought one of those CS8414 SMD-to-DIP boards because I had a DAC with a dubious CS8412. I decided on the CS8414 only because its jitter specs are better--24/96 is meaningless in my application. It works fine; I don't notice any sound quality difference between them, and I can't comment on if it locks any faster because that was the issue with the part it replaced. I saw that DIR9001 board (there's a slightly cheaper version here), but I didn't pursue it because I couldn't tell if it was truly compatible. It seems unlikely that it has all of the original functionality the CS8412/4 has--channel status bits, frequency reporting bits, etc.

What's different about the PCM1704's status? It's been NRND for a very long time. Compare that to the PCM63, which is explicitly marked as obsolete -- http://www.ti.com/product/pcm63

I'm pretty pleased with the EAD DSP-1000 MKIII I just picked up on audiogon for ~$200. The MSB Link DAC III also sounds really good to my ears, though I haven't figured out why yet.

Search on eBay for a CNC shaft coupler (like this one). They call them "flexible," but from experience they're not especially; I've used them before to extend the shaft of a control knob, and it's not like knob moved once it was mounted. Edit: Looks like johnwmclean beat me to it.

I really want to see a picture of that top on with the glow of the amp's LEDs behind it.

I've looked for HV-rated minigrabbers for a long time; not even Agilent makes one rated >300V (their U8201A kit says it's rated for 1kV, but the minigrabbers are still only 300V). There are alligator clips out there at 600V which are an okay replacement, but the minigrabbers seem fine to me when they're setup and not touched while live.

Does anyone know if the Exicon ECW20N20-Z/ECW20P20-Z are rebranded ALF16N20W/ALF16P20W? I've read through the datasheets and they report a few slightly different characteristics (Ciss, Coss, Crss, Ton, Toff), but are otherwise identical down to the unit price. If they are rebrands, they could be another source for the ALF16 200V parts, which appear to be unobtanium. Newark still has a few 160V parts at least.

They came today and look great! Thanks Kerry and Kevin Gilmore!

Microchip's funny like that; they're known for their PIC's, but also manufacture IC's for most PIC applications. They're really great for well-documented standalone interface chips--I'm a huge fan of their ethernet controllers.

Thanks Kevin; good to know. Your exact Stax jack is $9.17 in ceramic at Shapeways. I've never bought anything in ceramic from Shapeways, so I don't know how strong it would be. It might be worth increasing the diameter of the hole from .708" to .75" (or more?)--I'm worried about the ~0.05" of material between the pin and the outer diameter of the plug.

The Shapeways prices for the Stax socket I linked vary from $6 to $13 depending on the material. Ceramic is $6.18, black nylon (called "black strong & flexible") is $12.72. Their Materials page describes the exact pricing--for each material, price is either per volume or surface area, there are design rules that need to be met, and there's a minimum price per part. Minimum order is $25, and shipping is free/included. It seems like they're really targeting the low-volume/prototyping markets.

There are some pretty cheap 3D printing houses out there; it looks like they're limited to Nylon, ABS, and ceramic. Would those materials be suitable for a Stax socket? I ask because most of 3D printing shops make parts on-demand, and would make for one less group-buy to coordinate. Something like this? That was a few minutes spent with Google SketchUp, a ruler, and one of luvdunhill's Stax sockets, so it might not be accurate.