Ok... I'll be patient. I just had a rare dose of free time this afternoon but, any TOSLINK cable I have is probably laying around at home anyway.
It's not just the Z-5 I eventually want to record/make into waves... it's my Showeditor shows, Fiesta shows, Moncha shows, Phoenix shows, etc. Just to be able to cut down on the amont of gear to lug around and in theory... set up the output once, select a show and hit play. That's part of the probelm at SELEM since I would have had to swap DAC's, software packages, then readjust projection zones, and everything else that needs to be tweaked before hitting "play", while people are just sitting there waiting.
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A bit of thread drift....
Interestingly, two of these have came into my possession, SP-DIF FIBER to ILDA DECODER. This is 1997 technology, this fits in a board a fraction of this size, if done today. I don't have the encoders, but I know they are "OUT THERE" I hooked it to a stereo SP-DIF and the Cypress chip turned on the sync LEDs and locked to the clock. Random data showed up in a pattern on the DAC outputs, as expected. Remember this board is HUGE, because microprocessors back then did not have anywhere near the capacity of today.
So this is 12 bit X-Y and 8 bit RGB plus one channel of Audio plus beam table. With a optional Geo-Corrector on the board (no chips installed on mine) The encoder circuit is there too, again, unpopulated except for some of the CD interface parts.
This is a Fred Lord creation, made in 1997 and sold by Lowell Technologies. The SP-DIF format back then was two channel only, hence the FPGA on the board to change a stereo stream to ILDA. Now I understand SP-DIF does 7.1.
Don't know what I'll do with these boards, but the newer SP-DIF to 7.1 Decoder chips abound on the Cypress web site. They are the descendants of the decoder LSI on this board. The company that makes the ADAT interface chips has discontinued most of them. SO there goes Litepipe as a possible stand alone board. The one in the picture came from a former LFI installation.
So if you scrap a planetarium or "Laser Dinner Theatre" and find a stack of Show CDs you cant read, this is the decoder. I don't have any of the CDs.
'
This was "COMPLETE SHOW ON CD" long before "SOUND CARD DACING" was a common thing.
I've picked up two of them from two different sources in the past three weeks. They come in 19" unlabeled racks with a fiber input on the back, a ILDA DB25, and 4 leds on the front. There are pots for image size and offset on the panel. I know where there is/was a encoder and schematics, but I don't view it as worth two weeks pay.
Steve
Last edited by mixedgas; 03-22-2014 at 09:08.
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Quote.
Is this an assumption or have you done a side by side comparison? With the modification that I perform on the Layla the output is fantastic. When compared, side by side at SELEM, with a sound card DAC the difference between the two was substantial.
END QUOTE.
The difference between the sound card DAC and the MOTU is also amazing, and we had those where we could flip between them. The MOTU is smoking. I don't need to see the Layla side by side, I spent two weeks working with one and am familiar with some tiny artifacts that occur. Perhaps not with your mod, but the converted Layla I worked with had some minor issues. I didn't do the conversion, I just used it.
MOTU 828 + Adat offers clear advantages, including reconstruction interpolation and pop filtering. Plus the ability to scroll through the show (at variable speed) with the handwheel icon if you have the right software, which makes editing abstracts and recording tapes a breeze.
Steve
Last edited by mixedgas; 03-22-2014 at 11:46.
Qui habet Christos, habet Vitam!
I should have rented the space under my name for advertising.
When I still could have...
God... such a tease. First Facebook and now here. C'mon [DZ]... how MUCH for it, already???
(The adat to ilda of course. You know I already bought everything else... lol)
hehe! Sorry Brad! Coming soon, still have some fine tuning to do. Just got it working today. It's a versatile little critter though. It can take lightpipe in from an ADAT, from the ILDA to ADAT Converter, Layla and now I have it working with an E-MU 1010 card. I also have it all working with Winamp, which is nice! Anyway, I always appreciate your support of these crazy projects of mine! I can't wait to show you guys this and another() project on the burner, at SELEM!