Beresford Bushmaster DAC

Instead of piercing blue LED's, could you use a gentler more diffuse LED instead?

When I tarted up my X10-D, the kit came with a soft-tone blue LED to replace the perfectly adequate red one (clear LED when unlit). This faded away after a few weeks and I replaced it with a stock blue one (with extra inline resistor to try to cut it down). Still too bright.

Perhaps red is the new blue, and we can go full circle?

Some digital clocks adjust their display brightness to suite the ambient lighting. That can't be too expensive to implement.

My Caiman is now behind a door, but I must admit I didn't like those blue lights screaming at me.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-v...0/IMG_1683.JPG

My principle concern , however, is that the Bushmaster will not drive my power amp which starts with a volume pot.

I am grateful for Stan pointing that out, and look forward to developments.

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Originally Posted by StanleyB

I was also asked by a beta tester with a SKY box if it is possible to bypass the DAC's input that has the SKY box connected to it. when the Bushmaster is in the Auto Search mode. The reason appears to be that the SKy box, and many cable boxes, put out a constant signal on their digital audio output. This constant signal prevents the auto search function from finding any other active input.

Any ideas if those features are reasonably important in general?

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Sky boxes also have the HDMI output active all the time.
This causes a problem with many automatic HDMI switches.
Quality HDMI switch brands such as Octava get around this by suggesting to connect the always on device to input 1.

The device is programmed so that if input 1 is active to keep scanning the other inputs for a signal.
If signal found on input '3' etc, automatically switch to that and when it drops off then go back to next active input taking into account that input 1 will always be active if it is a sky box.

Hope that helps.

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Originally Posted by Labarum

My principle concern , however, is that the Bushmaster will not drive my power amp which starts with a volume pot..

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Most people on here will have forgotten more about audio electronics that I ever knew, indeed my technical prowess could be detailed on the back of a postage stamp, a small one - what about the volume pot shunt mod which is often mentioned on forums as a way to take the volume pot out of the signal path.

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Originally Posted by Labarum

My principle concern , however, is that the Bushmaster will not drive my power amp which starts with a volume pot.

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That's not entirely correct.
The Bushmaster is not suitable for use with a volume control that consists of just a set of parallel connected resistors. Those are in the main passive preamps. They are in the main not consistent in their input impedance due to the nature of their design. The Bushmaster has a minimum input impedance requirement of 1K, which some passive preamps seem to ignore at their lowest volume settings.

It so happens that I am the guy who invented the auto scart switch, and then the auto optical and auto HDMI switch, but never made anything from it. Many people have copied the basic operation of my invention over the last 18 odd years, but not really improved on it. The Bushmaster will have some new tricks up its sleeves in the LED and auto search department :eyebrows:.

I'm not a big fan of the bright led's on the caiman,i cover them with insulation tape :D

I like what glen croft has done on his amps,having a gentle led that is recessed back from the fascia.I don't know if you could do something like that? It would get my vote!

Just run the LEDs on very low current - saves power, looks better, increases life.

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Originally Posted by Val33

Personally, I would prefer to have no leds and only manual switching.

Val

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Agree!
When I build hifi devices for myself I avoid any lights and use simple on/off switch which looks cool and retro, inmho.
Also it does not take any precious electricity which is needed for sound :)