Analog-Precision Board

Miscellaneous => News Updates => Topic started by: Tranquility Bass on February 22, 2021, 11:24:01 PM

Title: What about a 16 channel Ultimate Pre-amp ? How about a 48 channel Preamp ?
Post by: Tranquility Bass on February 22, 2021, 11:24:01 PM
We had a recent enquiry by someone who wanted us to build a preamp with 16 outputs ! But what if someone asked us to build a 24 or 32 or even a 48 channel or more hi-end stereo pre-amp and our preamp only had 8 outputs? Fear not with the external Link-Port on both the UP2 and UPP you can chain as many preamps together as you need to get as many outputs as you need with no loss of information or performance ! Why would you need such high channel count ? One application comes to mind and that is a phased array loudspeaker or wave shaped loudspeaker with many independent driver channels such as the B&O kii audio etc or even a multiple active speaker that are all controlled by the same pre-amp.

By itself the Ultimate Preamp 2/+ has 8 outputs plus an optional digital output to drive an external stereo DAC bringing the total output count to 10 channels which is still far short of 48 channels. However, the main DSP board used in the preamp has provision for connecting multiple DSP boards as a master and many slave arrangement in the one chassis using the on-board Link-Port connector.

However, from a practical point of view this would require a redesign of the enclosure and power supply to handle multiple boards and output connectors which is just not practical at this point in time. We just needed to extend this facility outside the chassis so that we could link multiple preamps in 8-output clusters and they all needed to sync perfectly together when changing things like the volume, balance, mute etc because you don’t want to have to adjust each preamp’s volume control every time you need to adjust the volume.

Because this was a planned feature for the UP2 and UPP we needed to make sure it worked perfectly before we started shipping the preamps so whilst we still have all of the preamps in our lab undergoing testing before we ship them what better time to test out this feature which is why we have spent the last week updating the firmware and hardware to make sure it all works as advertised. As an example we took 6 preamps and chained them all together in a one-master five-slave system to give a total channel count of 48 channels !. We also loaded the simple Audioweaver pass through example which feeds a stereo signal directly to all 8 channels but this could be any design of your choosing. It also helps us test the HDMI I2S input and the Link-Port HDMI output ports on the preamp at the same time 😉

The bottom preamp is assigned the master preamp and the top five preamps are assigned slave preamps connected in daisy chain fashion using HDMI cables.

These preamps operate in perfect sync with each other and the master preamp controls the volume, balance and muting on all of the other slave preamps in perfect unison.

P1050144.JPG

48 channel VU meter operating in real time !

P1050145.JPG

Muting works across all preamps as well.

P1050148.JPG

A 48 channel Preamp playing vinyl ;)

P1050147.JPG


Title: Re: What about a 16 channel Ultimate Pre-amp ? How about a 48 channel Preamp ?
Post by: MichaelH on February 23, 2021, 07:15:29 PM
Very Impressive Dave.