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Do you remember your first DAC?

luxnulla

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Howdy, new member here. Great forum with a great tone and a great deal of knowledge!

I got my Audio 4 DJ exactly 10 years ago to fiddle with some DJ stuff and vinyl in general and never really jumped to something supposedly more Hi-Fi. I would be curious to see how this thing measures, being both a DAC, ADC and an amp. Cirrus Logic D/A converters and Burr Brown A/D converters (since it is supposed to receive timecoded input from the bundled vinyl to control the DJ sw)

native-instruments-audio-4-dj-2470603.jpg
 

DWPress

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My first stand alone DAC was a Griffin Technology PowerWave from around 2000. It was also an ADC, headphone amp, it had an integrated 20 watt class T amp and was marketed specifically to the beginnings of computer audiophile folks I think. Still have it but last I hooked it up it had some distortion so I've robbed it of a few parts doing DIY stuff.

I remember hooking it up to my brand new iMac G3 233mhz bondi blue gumdrop running OS9 and being amazed how far computers had come since my old C64 lol.

Actually, similar to many contemporary offerings in appearance.
Screen Shot 2019-05-08 at 4.08.37 PM.jpg
 
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LTig

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Howdy, new member here. Great forum with a great tone and a great deal of knowledge!

I got my Audio 4 DJ exactly 10 years ago to fiddle with some DJ stuff and vinyl in general and never really jumped to something supposedly more Hi-Fi. I would be curious to see how this thing measures, being both a DAC, ADC and an amp.
Just send it to @amirm and not only you would know.
 

DWPress

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Then I had thousands of 8-bit/8kHz µ-law DACs and ADCs - one for every subscriber line of the then-new Digital Telephone Central Offices I worked with from 1983.

My dad worked for Bell before the break up. I remember going into the switch room when I was a kid - it was all analog back then with a box clicking for each line as you turned that rotary dial on your phone. I remember later in the mid 80s too when the digital transition began and the first "computer" was brought in and Dad had lots of extra training so he could run "programs" off from card stacks that would take days to complete and update the system. A box the size of a Volkswagen bus took over all the duties of a quarter mile of analog switch boxes.
 

RayDunzl

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My dad worked for Bell before the break up. I remember going into the switch room when I was a kid - it was all analog back then with a box clicking for each line as you turned that rotary dial on your phone.

I showed up in Perkinsville Vermont to replace their old gear with a digital system we'd just ripped out of a bigger office near Bigelow Maine.

The switchman had no ringer on his phone.

If he heard the right sequence of clicks in all the rest of the clicking clatter, he'd go pick up his phone.

When people would come by to see the progress, he'd point at the old gear, and say "This is our Telephone Switch".

Then he'd point at the new stuff and say "This is our new Telephone Switch Simulator".

When we got done, it was just fan noise.

I felt sorry for him. Nothing to listen to. Had to swap his phone for one with a ringer.

Except he was also the head guy for that TDS office, and when I first drove into town following the big cables on the poles trying to find the place he was up there on the bucket truck fixing something.

His side job - had a light twin and did Air Courier service around the Northeast.

---

Visited a Bell Office that still had a Western Electric 1-A ESS

Below is a reprogrammable read-only memory card from some part of one. The little square bits are the magnetizable bits. Maybe that's where the name originated. 64 words of 44 bits

They'd pull the card, put it in a little machine to set/erase the bits as needed, and shove it back in. Many cards.

1557376818440.png
 

DWPress

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I felt sorry for him. Nothing to listen to. Had to swap his phone for one with a ringer.

Except he was also the head guy for that TDS office, and when I first drove into town following the big cables on the poles trying to find the place he was up there on the bucket truck fixing something.

I know what you are talking about very well, that guy could've been my dad. Started out on a line crew but they sent him into engineering, educated him and then he bailed with the early retirement once Bell dissolved and Ameritech (in the midwest) took over and sent college geeks in (like me) to take over operations.

I've got a whole box of those cards! I used them for step flashing repairs on my dormers and even in a couple DIY amp projects for shielding!
 

DWPress

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This!

AT&T Archives: The Step-By-Step Switch

The cacophony of sound in a big switch room was almost disorienting. I've got one of those old oak sliding ladders in the video too BTW, repurposed for my garage loft.
 

RayDunzl

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When you put a new phone office into service, there was no turning back...

Made for some long nights when the new gear/software/data went south.

 

RayDunzl

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The cacophony of sound

Here you go...


Fortunately, I didn't have any of that insanity beyond sticking my head in the door for a minute just to see.
 

luxnulla

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Just send it to @amirm and not only you would know.
Being in Denmark that will likely cost me as much as buying a new device. But I'd be happy if one of the US members had one and were willing to send it for review.
 

Nango

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This was my very first DAC, actually I even didn't know that it was a DAC:
lindy_70408_1.JPG

There was a time when TVs started lacking audio outputs and featured only HDMI or digital sound output. My old AVR by that time had no HDMI and no digital sound inputs. The only way to route the TV sound to the AVR was such a converter, no one said DAC to these items by that time.

https://www.lindy-international.com...nverter.htm?websale8=ld0101.ld020102&pi=70408
 
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Kal Rubinson

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Here's mine:
 

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Sal1950

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Kal Rubinson

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Kal built it as a college science project. :)
Yeah, I built it but I was hardly a college student at the time. Already tenured.

FWIW, it used PCM63s.
 
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Rja4000

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The very first device I used to convert D to A outside of the source device was this one: http://www.datrecorders.co.uk/dtc670.php,
back in 1993,
I connected the digital output of my CD player and played through it, because I thought the sound was better than direct from the CD analog outputs.
 
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