TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby Downunder55 » 29 Aug 2014, 09:32

Downunder55 wrote:Waiting , waiting .... All my parts are still shipping, but as I am away at the moment not as frustrating as it would have been if I were at home watching the post box :lol:


At last lot's of pressies in the last few days......just one more to come and then can get to proving the build before working out if I can squeeze it all in to the case I wanted.

Just quickly tested the two Amps attached to a Musiland DAC to make sure they were both working, in the short 30min test on both, the Audiobah sounded significantly clearer IMO to the Ybzd, but still not quite as good as the Sonos amp.....I suppose some degree of burn-in will be required, but a lot more listening required yet.

Already tested the 2.5'" drive with the micro router but it doesn't have enough power for the drive, was really trying to get away without a powered hub, may have to source a low powered SSD

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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby skrodahl » 29 Aug 2014, 22:07

Downunder55 wrote:At last lot's of pressies in the last few days......just one more to come and then can get to proving the build before working out if I can squeeze it all in to the case I wanted.


I see a lot of cool stuff there. You got the power button :). Which color is it? I got all red/blue/yellow, and I just love the yellow one. I can see the ALPS pot, and there's a relay board as well. Anything else you'd like to point out?

I really hope you get it all to fit in your case, please continue to report your progress.

I'm glad to hear that you like the audiobah board, I can't wait to get mine. Did some PSU capacitor swapping on my YJ board today, can't really tell if it made any difference. A lot of people are claiming that the Jamicon caps are bad. They measure quite nicely to me though. By changing to 330uF, I'm closer to the TI datasheet recommendation.

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-skrodahl

Muffsy Phono Preamp PP-3 || Audiobah TPA3116 || ESP P88 || ProJect Debut Carbon Espirit DC || RuneAudio / RaspBerry Pi / HifiBerry DAC || Dynaco A25
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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby Downunder55 » 31 Aug 2014, 00:09

skrodahl wrote:I see a lot of cool stuff there. You got the power button :). Which color is it? I got all red/blue/yellow, and I just love the yellow one. I can see the ALPS pot, and there's a relay board as well. Anything else you'd like to point out?


Got the blue button, but also liked the yellow or green as well so may have to get all three to make a final choice !

One thing I didn't realise is that the button remains depressed when the switch is on

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The project is to make a stand alone Rune music player ...... just add power and speakers !

Just love it when a plan comes together, a photo of the bench testing should help ....

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The project is powered by a 19V 4.5A laptop power supply, this powers the Audiobah amp @ 19v and also powers a little board that drops the 19v to 5v to power the Pi and Router.

As I am planning to place this all in an "optimistically small" chassis, I didn't want to use a powered hub so sourced a small NAS wireless router (the little black box) to connect a 2.5" SATA drive FLAC music library and to also provide the network to interface the iPad Rune UI. Unfortunately the old SATA drive I have seems to require more that the 1.2A @ 5v the router supports.

As anyone tried to power a 2.5" drive on the Pi with one of the dual USB cables that will provide power to the drive from 2 USB ports ?

The other option is to source an SSD drive, the Samsung 840 EVO seems to be reasonably power conservative at 0.6A @ 5V so that may help. In the interim a USB stick will provide the data source. The small white router is an alternative if I manage to drive the disk/SSD directly from the Pi ......with shipping from China generally longer than my patience threshold I ordered it just in case !

The RCA connection is only temp, I am still waiting on some right angle 2.54 3P connectors to attach to the HifiBerry directly then I will remove the RCA connectors from the board.

The initial set-up went well using Rune Audio Alpha 0.3, you guy's are just sensational with this App, just love it thank you !!!

All worked as planned, just one little annoying issue that is a small hum/scratching sound with no music playing, that only marginally increases with increased volume. The sound changes with Pi activity !

So far have identified after much testing:

1. If the Pi is powered from another power source the noise goes away

2. If the RCA connectors are disconnected the sound goes away

3. if I connect the ground (a mounting hole) on the AMP to the metal surround of the USB or LAN connectors on the Pi the noise reduces but is not fully eliminated and to a lesser degree from the Pi to the small power board

This has me thinking I have a grounding issue ? ....... any thoughts ?

I am still a little concerned that the power supply (19v @ 4.5A) may not be adequate especially when the drive is attached, but we will see.

Other than the small amount of noise with no music playing it is all been working well for the last couple of hours and the sound out of the Audiobah/Pi/Berry combination is pretty sweet considering the investment !

The relay board was also a just in case I was going to have a second input source, but this is a future consideration/option
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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby skrodahl » 31 Aug 2014, 15:42

It's really cool to see your project come together like you planned, a few reconsiderations along the way is unavoidable.

The power button stays recessed when you turn it on. It's barely noticeable from a distance. The other option is to use the momentary push-button variant, but then you'd need to make a separate circuit to keep the power on.

It definitely seems like you have a ground loop somewhere. It's difficult to see why. I would make sure none of the connectors are actually connected to the chassis.

I wouldn't worry, except for the ground loop issue, about the amperage of your PSU. I'm using a 3.5A, and it is more than sufficient to give all the power I need and then some. Under normal use, you will rarely come close to the rated wattage of the amp.
-skrodahl

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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby Peter » 03 Sep 2014, 10:26

Some pictures of my first attempt. Plays perfectly - everything works great.

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Container is a repurposed ATX power supply case, power switch is from an ATX ps, binding posts rescued from some old speakers.
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Front. Knobs are hand made from Macrocarpa, bottom strip is Oregon pine, and the red LED is to indicate power on. Aluminium detailing is just for fun.
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Inside, showing binding post, RCA and power switch connections. Power supply is a repurposed Acer 19v 3.42amp laptop power supply.
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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby Peter » 03 Sep 2014, 10:42

Photos contd.....

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Inside front. Volume pot (on the left) follows skrodahl's advice - 100k linear pot, with 10k resistors from output to ground. These are shrouded in heatshrink. The balance pot, on the right was harvested from an old National stereo. All wires are twisted to reduce interference, and cross at right angles where possible. No feedback, or hum detected.
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Birds eye view with hand painted case top. The 10k resistors mentioned in the previous post are contained in the blue heatshrink. The green pcb is cut from an old motherboard, and just used as a base for the TPA3116 board. The yellow rca cables, shown in earlier photos are home made interconnects, using cat5e solid core ethernet cable, plaited to reduce interference.
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Now for the next project...raspberry pi B+ with either hifiberry or iqaudio dac, and audiobah TPA3116 board in a single case (probably an ATX case again!)

Current pi is model B, with PiCobber i2s DAC, with RuneAudio flawlessly (to my ears) wirelessly streaming to the amp.

I guess it dates me a bit, but Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights sounds absolutely amazing - incredibly detailed and rich sound.

Photos are a bit rubbish - I will try better next time

EDIT: I used 10k ohm resistors on the Volume pot, not 12k ohm which is what I originally said :oops:
Last edited by Peter on 04 Sep 2014, 00:39, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby skrodahl » 03 Sep 2014, 22:30

Hi Peter,
That is one seriously cool project you've got going there. Kudos!

I hope you are happy with the volume/balance controls. One advantage with using the 12k resistors to ground is that they present a load to the amp.

At 26db gain, the input impedance of the TPA3116 is 30k. Although the rule of thumb is that the impedance of the preceding part should be 1/4, that's close enough anyway. This also may explain why you have no hum, while there are a lots of reports on various noises from many others.
-skrodahl

Muffsy Phono Preamp PP-3 || Audiobah TPA3116 || ESP P88 || ProJect Debut Carbon Espirit DC || RuneAudio / RaspBerry Pi / HifiBerry DAC || Dynaco A25
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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby Peter » 11 Sep 2014, 11:11

@skrodahl: Thanks, the sound is amazing - I am now looking for some cheap (vintage) high sensitivity speakers to complement the amp

Has your Audiobah board arrived? Seems there is a long lead time for their boards. Please let us know your experience.
I have ordered the Sure board and hope to be impressed. I notice the Sure has on board RCA connections, and I hope the vias between the sockets are for additional (panel mount) RCA connectors.

@downunder55: How is the build going? 8-)

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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby skrodahl » 11 Sep 2014, 11:33

Peter wrote:@skrodahl: Has your Audiobah board arrived? Seems there is a long lead time for their boards. Please let us know your experience.


My Audiobah board was marked as shipped yesterday, it will still be a few weeks before it arrives. I will definitely make sure to report about it when it's in my enclosure.
-skrodahl

Muffsy Phono Preamp PP-3 || Audiobah TPA3116 || ESP P88 || ProJect Debut Carbon Espirit DC || RuneAudio / RaspBerry Pi / HifiBerry DAC || Dynaco A25
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Re: TPA3116 / RuneAudio Project

Postby Downunder55 » 13 Sep 2014, 02:00

Well finally solved the SATA disk problem with a new interface card, this was the third one I tried !

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Initially had an issue with getting all the album tracks showing up in the UI, it had the all the artists, all the albums but when I went into the album folder no tracks were available, initially thought it was a problem with Alpha 3 but after much reading it didn't seem to be a reported issue so connected the disk to the laptop, all the tracks were there.....ummm .........trap for young players (yet still getting bitten) the main directory was named "Music" on the disk and I had named it within Rune as "music", a quick change long re-sync and all good !

Still have the slight grounding issue to work on and seeking help on DIYAudio

I must say it is all sounding pretty good.

Now need to have a think about the final box and all those cables, initially might start with making up a new Cat 5 cable as that is the most rigid and bulky.
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