Yeah, I know the price of a fully optioned MSB, I’ve heard it. Actually I preferred the sound of my Esoteric which is less than 1/4 the cost. However that is an entirely meaningless assessment because they were 2 completely different systems in different spaces. The key to the success of the TSS is not the sound, it’s whether it behaves as intended, i.e. operational robustness without any quirks. Assuming it gets built with everything zipped up tight, software updates that update, not the wrong face plate installed, etc etc.
I know what you are saying but I do not think the DS is that bad. Even with my first one DOA. Customer service goes a long way too.
Ted, on the software side of things is the TSS using similar code to the older Directstream or are you starting from the ground up coding for the TSS? I guess what I’m really asking is, is the TSS more about better hardware rather than better software and hardware? If you’re using a more powerful FPGA I suppose there is more you can do processing-wise, but will the TSS and DS still remain mostly the same in software?
The newer FPGA necessitates a change in tools, but almost all of the DS /DS Jr FPGA software will be used unaltered. I’ll be backporting all new features that the TSS gets if the DS / DS Jr hardware will support them. There are a few ideas I have that will be unique to the TSS (at least until I figure out how to put them in the DS /DS Jr.) The TSS attempts to use experience, newer technology and budget to do things that weren’t possible for the DS - e.g. the relays I mention above aren’t cheap and take a certain amount of support, but their function is important. Isolating inputs and outputs is more costly than you’d think (or at least than I thought) but it’s important. Multiple reclockers is very expensive but important…
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I love reading about that stuff!
Just saying, if all buyers of TSS read this forum and experienced Ted’s remarkable openness about design and development, I believe the demand for the DAC would soar and could sell for more than 20k. The participants contributions are adding a lot of value too. It’s been a great ride …
Name-wise, I do like TED for Ted’s Electronic DAC. Although it leaves out many others contributions.
Hey,hey,hey…wait a minute!!! What about us poor folk who would rather see the prices go down…not up!!!
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Maybe if the performance is really, really, really great and the price is really, really, really high, they can start taking other things on trade in addition to audio stuff. Like cars, kids, elderly grandparents, in laws, redundant internal organs…
Just a thought.
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I need all my internal organs but a left… Might be worth it.
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Hah! How bout a discount if you come here and assemble your TSS yourself? 
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I’d be happy to try to assemble yours, but not mine!
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Ted, I am interested to hear what improvements you have made to the TSS power supply ? Is it still going to be a linear P/S as used in the DS/Jnr or are you incorporating a switcher P/S.? If it is still a linear supply will there be significant changes to the P/S, layout, transformer, etc…? A few months back a couple of DS owners reported improvements from bypassing with additional electrolytic caps, etc. have you investigated this aspect…
Thanks.
The power supply in the analog box is all new but in ways it goes back to the power supply I had in my original prototype. There is one transformer for the “analog” with four windings for the first level of bipolar supplies for each channel. Each of those has carefully chosen rectifiers and four wide bandwidth regulators in parallel to further lower the noise. Those are further filtered by another four wide bandwidth regulators for the stereo bipolar supplies for the stereo sets of 8 digital switches per channel. The second level supplies use (sets of) large caps for the input, output, and four other places in the regulation.
There’s another transformer for the rest of the analog box, it has more of the carefully chosen rectifiers and 16 top level regulators in parallel and then many regulators to cover the range of sections: a top level regulator and 3 lower level regulators for the master clock, two more individual regulators for the clock distribution, a top level and 2 lower level for the 2 reclockers, there are also more regulators for each of the optical transmitter, optical receiver, the multiplexor which generates and combines the upgoing clock with the upgoing status signals and two more for the deserializer for the downcoming optical link that separates the control info from the DSD for each channel. There’s is also regulator for the clock synchronizer which takes care of the delay in the round trip time caused by the digital box and the lengths of the optical cables. (And probably some more that I’m forgetting about at the moment.)
The digital box also has two power transformers, one for the digital card and another for the display, each of which has more carefully selected rectifiers, new multi level regulation, etc. After the two levels of top level regulators there are three separate regulators for the FPGA, an isolated supply for each of the I2S channels (each of which has a regulator for the power output for the I2S connector and another for the I2S receiver), and other regulators for the relays/relay controller, the optical transmitter, the optical receiver, …
All of the top level supplies are power factor corrected and only draw significant current away from the peak of the AC waveform to avoid being influenced by or influencing other linear supplies in your systems. There are also filters at each rectifier to smooth the transitions from non-conducting to conducting to avoid the typical RF generated there. More details will be in the manual and online product documentation.
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^^^^^
“FANTASTIC”… I was sitting in the dentist waiting area when your reply arrived to my phone and I laughed out loud as I read the text. Girl on reception said, ‘‘something or somebody has amused you’’ My reply: - Ted Smith. Regulators. Oh, !? … Girl looked at me as if I was insane . Anyway, well done - really looking forward to hearing your accomplishments.
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Ted, do you have a working prototype?
No. I’ll probably not report much about that until most everything is working.
OK. Keep us posted…
Quite a bit of the design on the analog board has be running to get sound, that’s the first priority obviously. The digital board should be very close, even if one input is screwed up that’s not a real problem for testing. I doubt that there will be problems in the power supplies or sections of the boards that are pretty similar to the DS or the Jr. But faults in the optical path would be really annoying 