ModWright and Digital!

I am pleased to announce that I had a great conversation with the digital engineer that i have consulted with, and learned that our LONG AWAITED digitial input mod board, first installed in the Sony XA-5400ES, IS NOW COMPLETE AND WORKING!

The project took MUCH longer than expected and I cannot blame the engineer I hired for the digital ‘heavy lifting’ design and BGA programming.  It was, rather, a series of unfortunate events that continued to delay the design process until now….admittedly my fault, because of bad decisions I made. The good news is that I am told that it sounds fantastic and I will be receiving the first article, installed in a Sony XA-5400ES, next week.  My consultant is in the Bay Area and I am in WA, so the final work involved a bit of shipping back and forth!

Now that the digital input mod is complete, we can move onto the final design of our DAC with USB inputs, that will be available for the LS 100 and KWI 200.  I am being realistic when I say that these products will not likely be available until near the end of this year.  I am however, pleased to say that we are moving forward in earnest and the excitement level is HIGH at ModWright Central!

The PCB’s are going to be ordered on Monday (Nov. 7th) for the DAC module that will plug into the digital input PCB.  The design is modular, to allow for different DAC boards to be installed, as technology progresses.  The USB interface is also separate.  The DAC chosen for this design is a Burr Brown chip.  I chose this chip because I like the sound of the chip!

The digital input board, used for the mods as well as for the actual DAC itself, has built in ultra-low jitter clock with buffered inputs, managed by microprocessor control.

While we wait for the DAC PCB’s, the digital input PCBs will be assembled and soon we will make available, the digital input mod (RCA and AES/EBU) for both the Sony XA-5400ES and Oppo BDP-95 players.

We are assembling a ‘digital toolbox’ that will soon allow us to offer digital inputs for specific modified players, a built-in DAC module, including 24/192 asynch’ USB for our preamps and integrated amp, and also a standalone tube DAC with USB and all standard digital inputs, capable of up to 24/192 operation!

The future of Computer-Based Digital at ModWright is BRIGHT!

Thanks and please check back for more information!

Dan Wright