Got an email about winning stuff if I share on social media.
Well, that’s not happening, but I thought I’d share what I’m up to anyway.
Recently my Monoprice 6-zone whole house unit died. To be honest, it was never that good and consequently got little use. The keypads were garbage (not sure who decided the blue LED had to burn out your retina or why holding the power key for what seems like an eternity to turn it off was a good idea) and the sound wasn’t great.
I bought some up2stream pro’s a year or so ago to play around with and found them to be a solid solution at a reasonable price.
Right now I am building a drop-in replacement for the Monoprice unit. 2U rack space, six zones.
The differences being:
-no useless keypads
-way more power (6x TPA3255 powered by 3 meanwell 36v supplies)
-way more clarity (ES9038 DACs)
So far I’ve prototyped a single zone successfully.
The biggest issue I ran into (which I spent an hour rewiring and swapping components) was the infamous distortion on one channel and then no sound from one channel.
I am only streaming via ethernet, so I can’t speak for what works with wifi.
The solution? Power the amp on after the up2stream pro. I can reproduce this 100% of the time. I’ve seen solutions regarding shielded cables, spdif converters… all sorts of additional work. Turning the amp on after the up2stream (or cycling the power on the amp if you turned it on first) solves the issue-- for me-- 100% of the time.
Soon I will be prototyping a pcb to soft-start the amp (just discovered up2stream can assign a pin to signal amp turn-on) and provide the 5v for the DAC and up2stream.
I do this in my spare time so you can count on at least a month or more to see a completely finished prototype in the 2U enclosure.
If anybody has been down this road and has any ideas or “I wish I had…” experience, please let me know.
