Posted on Sunday, 26th February 2012 by Auw Jimmy

I never ever think what is circular connector before – and what it’s all about. But when it comes upon a time when I decide to split my power supply from my preamp, then I start to think how to connect them.

Well, we have several options, but the most common one is by using a connector which commonly called circular or cylindrical connector. I would rather say it’s similar like a DIN connector, but with a lot of option in the size and pin counts.

Before, I plan to go with Amphenol Military Grade one (with extra protection in the harsh environment). But it’s quite difficult to find as my needs is minimum 4 pins @ 2 mm diameter at least. Almost a lot of online store doesn’t have any stock – even if they have, the price is quite high.

So eventually I find this one, Nanaboshi circular, at quite reasonable price and could fill up my requirements.

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Tags: Circular Connector, Nanaboshi
Posted in Collectible Stuff, DIY Audio | Comments (9)

Posted on Sunday, 26th February 2012 by Auw Jimmy

Indonesia High End Audio Club (IHEAC) arranges a ‘grand prix’ to encourage DIY community to build and show their best product. There will be several blind test and each session will have 3 winners with different points rewarded. At the end of the year, the highest point accumulated shall be the first winner, etc (just like F1 race which will have the winner at the end of season).

The first session was DAC, which quite interesting as not much DIY touched this part. Probably because it’s not too easy to play with digital circuit.

Not too much photos in this session as most of the contenders are similar (silver or black boring box, without any interesting part to be shown).

Below wass the main stage. We could see Vienna Acoustics Mozart Grand as main speaker.

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Tags: Blind Test, iheac, Indonesia
Posted in DIY Audio, Indonesia | Comments (9)

Posted on Sunday, 12th February 2012 by Auw Jimmy

I break one of my tube (in purpose) to take this shoot. It’s an EF184 made by Philips. I don’t have any use for this tube anyway. So just enjoy the weekend shoot meanwhile I’m soldering my DAC

EF184 is a high gain pentode with frame grid. Mostly was used as IF Amplifier with high operation bandwidth up to 40 MHz in old television receiver.

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Tags: EF184, Photogenic, tube
Posted in Collectible Stuff | Comments (5)

Posted on Monday, 6th February 2012 by Auw Jimmy

This article, for most people, considered as ‘snake oil’ or made by ‘retarded audiophool guy’ (could be me). I just throw a little bit idea in this post, but feel free to try. During this stage, I will not share too many thing (still on experimental stage). But if you are interested to find out more, ‘MDI’ and ‘Pierre Johannet’ could be your next keywords at Google. Feel free to dig more.

At some parts, air is the most natural insulation, but has very low breakdown voltage. Although some people claim Teflon as the most superior insulation with very high breakdown voltage, but at some point, I would rate Teflon as slightly analytical sounding. In order to have ‘just enough’ protection and ‘good sounding application’, we can go with things just similar spec with air (a little bit better, I think). Well, name it cotton, paper, natural fiber, silk, etc. Feel free to experiment with them.

For the conductor, off course, pure material is a must. Either pure copper or pure silver. I would choose for pure silver whenever possible (I mean, whenever I can afford it).

As we are picking an insulation with lower breakdown voltage, then it also means lower protection from environment outside. Then another protection is a must. After several experiments, I come up with a block of wood with specific distance to separate or isolate them (the cables in this context). Sometime I also combine with a tinned copper rod as separator or insulator to prevent oxidation.

The wood block was made by my good friend, Mr. AS from somewhere around West Java, Indonesia. It was a very nice wood block with very accurate cut (machine made for sure). Thanks a lot for such a good work, bro!

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Tags: Cable, Copper, MDI, Pierre Johannet, silver
Posted in DIY Audio | Comments (8)