vmps, art d/io, & boldercables.com

Yep, the sound in our room was really green for most of the show.....The speakers had 75 hours on them and we had about that on the JC-1 prototypes and nothing even started to gel until late Thursday and Friday wherein the sound got to table radio standards.....I don't know where to point the finger on this one, but will have the JC-1s here next week to voice.....Have a friend close to me with some Wisdoms and they didn't break in pretty, but I expect a bit of both......Just in the talking stage right now on a preamp and trying to relate that the Blowtorch is a hot-rod and not easily built as parts have to be all dead matched to make it work properly, something that normally cannot be done in high volume production.....Ask again in a few months.....

Anyone have any RFI problems with their Art DI/O's? If yes, have you been able to solve them and how?

sorry joe, i have no problems here... what is it doing? you may also want to go to the yahoo site set up for diomods; lotsa technically-oriented folk there, who may be able to help...

doug s.

Hi Doug,
It is generating interference with my radio reception. Not unusual for digital products to do this (I've tried expensive ones that were worse in this regard), but it is annoying. Have to disconnect interconnects to it in order to listen to tuner w/o static. Was hoping that maybe the modifications do away with this and will investigate as you suggest. Still burning it in (it does improve each day) and waiting for the upgraded power supply (Stancor 3400mv) to arrive. Other things I've noticed is that it sounds best in the x2 mode; can't get any sound in ext sinc mode. Also, mine sounds a little better with the tube installed. I know the tube supposedly has nothing to do with the d/a circuit, but I notice the led's next to the tube warmth adjustment don't work unless the tube is installed and the sound is slightly smoother and there is less of the RFI mentioned above when the tube is installed. I won't comment on the sound until I have gotten the upgraded ps and it has run for a couple of hundred hours.

joe, you're correct that the tube warmth adjustment led's don't work w/o the tube. but, as the tube is in the adc circuit, these lights are meaningless when used as a dac only... folks have thought a possible reason why the unit may sound better w/the tube, is that it draws power away from the diodes in the adc circuit, & these, being crap, may let some unwanted signals feed back into the dac side. one of the recommended mods is replacing *all* the diodes, both dac & adc, w/schottky's, which work much better... could be part of the rfi problem you're experiencing. i'd suggest moving the dac, & the cd-player in relation to the tuna, to see if this has any effects. also, may want to put ferrite magnets on the power cords & interconnects. also, are you using any gain attenuation? the di/o, being a pro-audio product, outputs a 7v signal, while 2v is more typical of home-audio gear... i recall you mentioning using an attenuator module, mebbe this also has something to do w/the rfi...

re: getting it to sync properly, it seems to be very sensitive to the digital cabling; believe it or not, i have had great success w/the $10 rat-shack 75 ohm cable. no sync problems at all w/my nad changer. but, i'm gonna try an apogee wyde-eye pro cable. (~$25 street-price) brianw sez it's the best, short of dropping $1200 on an fim digital cable... also, the digital input resistor is 100 ohms (pro audio, again?); i replaced it w/a 75 ohm resistor. you really need to do a few tweaks to the di/o, along w/hooking up that stancor. the thing, quite good stock, really responds to these simple mods.

doug s.