Icarium

I expect pretty much everyone is in your boat with regards to building. It is understandable. But it definitely needs to be made explicitly clear. I do hope we can keep with luvdunhill's original vision which makes assembly to chassis possible for an unskilled end user. If that simply isn't possible then I will call upon local resources to get it done (Probably my family). So yeah I think I have pretty realistic expectations at this point and fully plan to stay in and see this through.. all the way. I'm really sorry if I cast a downer on this effort :/

sfd-3 or whatever is the processor 3. That's what I meant. I think they just went all out cost no object with it. I think the biggest difference is probably that it uses discrete I/V designed by Ultra Analog who made the chips while I don't know what the 2 uses, but not that. The Spectral uses a fully discrete I/V as well but it was designed by themselves. The Processor 3 has a tubed output stage versus the spectral's solid state one. Also the tube output stage I think has 2x the number of tubes versus the 2's output stage. Which of course means its way more awesome.

Yeah I dunno the reviews stack the SFD series pretty on par with the Levinson stuff and the Spectral DAC as well. This dac should not be a slouch at all. I think it's a good value at the 900 dollar price, but it's kind of pointless for me as I plan on getting a 3 at some point. The 3 should basically be on par with the Spectral with the differences a bit less clarity in exchange for fuller mids and more bass quantity.

Nod. I was referencing luvdunhills initial suggestion of: "I think the rough plan would be that all the boards and power supplies are built and tested. Cases would be speced out so that things are pretty much plug and play with no soldering required. The I/O board would contain PCB mount jacks and probably there would be a front and rear panel board that would be scored and could be broken out. Wires from each PCB would be pre-soldered by the builder/tester and then just connected to the IO boards. The boards would already be connected to the angled aluminum (done by the builder) (edit: maybe this is a bad idea, but this shouldn't be that hard for the end user to do as long as the devices could be protected in transit) and then this angled aluminum would just be screwed into the already tapped heat sinks. I'm not sure to what extent this is feasible, but sounds like a good idea to me. This way the cases would just be shipped once to the organizer and then a second time to the end-user who would just assemble things together." This makes it sound like a significantly simpler process than the usual fitting boards/heatsinks to chassis business I'd love to work with a builder though generally if possible I just don't know if people have the time and energy. Would you like to partner up with me ? I can help subsidize the cost of your parts.

Shrug.. what in digital has changed so much in 15 years? New formats? Opamps I'll give you but those can be swapped. I'm pretty sure this is fully discrete anyways. DAC chips haven't. There aren't many current production chips that can keep up with the Ultra Analog discrete ladder dac chips this uses for redbook. Digital filters? Yeah it'd be nice if this used the PMD100 but that is also an older out of production chip... Pacific Microsonics knew their shit even if they don't exist anymore (Bought out by Microsoft). I don't think analog output stages really have made many advances either.

Yeah. It's just a question of if the number of builders willing to go the whole hog meshes with the number of people interested

Yeah I'm pretty much limited by money and what builders are willing to do. I think that's probably the limiting reagent for everybody involved. I propose we keep it pretty basic with just stuffed boards and then the extras if people are interested like chassis elements.. more boards etc. Luvdunhill's original idea of something that can be assembled by the end user rather than requiring builders to put the thing together is probably the most realistic goal anyways. If there are builders that are interested in either stuffing some of the more optional boards and frills or even building the whole thing perhaps they can express interest and individuals can work something out with them. If a majority is interested in something and there are builders to match then we can keep it in the thread. I mean sure as a non builder it would be awesome to just hand some dudes some money and get a fully built out ultra badass custom dynafet... but I don't think that is realistic at all and this is probably something we really need to manage expectations on. So yeah probably best to keep it basic and manageable right now. Any frills group buys should still go down if it makes sense like the sowter transformers and whatever crazy controller type stuff that i don't even really understand but want 4 of.

No I'm not worried about that at all. I trust you I'm more worried about people starting to add together #s after the 3rd or 4th order and then wondering if they have enough to go all the way especially without realizing how long this project will probably take to complete. Yeah I think figuring out exactly what's going into boxes well help deal with that as well. I guess my main worry is stemming from better and cooler sounding ideas that I keep wanting and wondering if 1200-1500 remains accurate and will remain accurate 3-4 months down the road Nate's comment will help manage expectations there as well. If I am throwing in 1800 to 2250 (My cost + 50 percent of a builders cost) that's within budget, but if it starts pushing much past 3k then I will have to wonder myself if I can go through with things and its really best to kinda have a good idea of that kind of thing before we start doing orders to do a final reality check. Anyway I've been thinking about this for awhile and I didn't want to be the dirty bastard who polluted this awesome effort/opportunity with money talk.. but I feel like it's going to save heartbreak further down the road. That being said the paypal refunding idea is kinda brilliant I didn't think of that. But still I'm thinking it would be cool if we just kinda hand everyone a cost which is balanced against any procurement costs and then they figure out exactly how the subset of people they owe money to will be (builder perhaps.. other procurers) and then they pay that person and we try and minimize the size of that subset. (Similar to Dusty Chalk's suggestion) Of course financially this may not be doable for some procurers... but I still think we can work around the above described framework.

Might be time to organize the procurement/wealth distribution at this point. Looking at things it looks like there are 5 guys who are doing procurement. Nate brought up a good point with regards to paypal fees eating us alive if we don't plan it out somewhat. Perhaps before we start doing any ordering we should get get some decent quotes for the procuring and figure out how much money will need to move around in the end. I know we have the rough 1200-1500 figure, but the project is continuously evolving and it is safer for everybody involved if we have all this stuff hammered out first and will allow us to manage expectations better. I think money management and expectation management is going to be pretty key. P.S. I don't really know anything about transformers per se, but I was thinking for the toroids we have a standarized spec and people can either opt in for 1 or 2? Would that make sense? I'm going to be relying on Nate, provided he's willing, to basically let me know exactly what to order and I'll place the order when we are ready and then distribute.

So if we are a worthless non builder would the idea be throwing in an extra 50 percent in the semi conductor warchest? Would it be worth attempting to match builder to buildee at this point for boards at any rate?

It's a decent DAC, but I'd probably only go for the mark 3 (At a good price) or the sfd-3 (More like 2-3k). Filburt would know more than me.

James and Tango was the other one. I think they fell from the sky. Special meteorite iron.

Sure. Like I said I don't find it particularly unreasonable as I also mentioned I am very familiar with some of the more extreme cases of mark up.

Ha interesting I've heard that $1200 figure as well for parts exactly. Interesting that two independent sources calculated the exact same figure. That being said I don't think its an unreasonable amount of markup since $1200 in parts doesn't factor in labor. Hell I've paid Singlepower markup. TTVJ/Millet markup seems way reasonable especially given how decent the amp sounds and how solidly it is built.

Wow... those are very pretty and well priced. I don't need monoblox though thankfully... If I got some magnepans though... damn but my room can't support those.

Hey what a coincidence. That's what I want too! ;p

Partagas SD4... box just came in. Dated June 2008 $$.

Good call. That maybe should go into a separate thread that only has posts for that. Btw vvs_75 I still think you do nice looking work

Yeah but my SS-1 has like 16 hand matched mosfets. Mikhail told me this himself over phone!

You are all saying words that I like! RK50 what? ;p

Mmmm polystyrene. Mica is good too from what I hear. Mmm teflon as well.

I've love to hear it But so far away

Kevin Gray is no slouch. I'm definitely interested.. but eh I should let some of my other big up coming purchases resolve first probably..

I dunno what an atsc transmitter is, but I want two.

Ah I remember this guy. He was a nice dude. F owning another singlepower amp though.