This is a repeat of sorts, because I had this setup working years and years ago when I lived in Livermore, for my bedroom system- and now I wanted to set this up again. Of course, you can never go home, and sometimes things quite working... like the iPad 1 I used in it!
The motivation is having a fast and friendly music selection here in San Ramon while most of my gear is in storage in Idaho- including my music server bits and pieces.
This was originally used in a bedroom system with a Berkeley Audio Alpha DAC- which Steve Manning now has.
This is the first DAC I ever heard that had imaging that was reminiscent of my vinyl setup from Colorado many years earlier.
The key to putting this together originally, and resurrecting it now, is the Cambridge Audio ID100 dock.
There wasn't any way to test this without a 30 pin pod, iPhone, or iPad, so I had to take this on faith that it probably still worked.
The solution on the iPad side proved to be easier than I expected- there are a lot of "refurbished with new battery" iPads on eBay, the last model year with 30 pin connector and max'd out storage generally goes for about $100. The vendor I picked said they were delivered in Apple packaging. This was true, and in fact, given the packaging and the iPad were absolutely pristine, and the battery completely discharged, I suspect I got an NOS part- "New Old Stock".
I spent a bit of time setting it up from scratch and NOT getting mail or other services working, so that it wouldn't use up storage space. I loaded up my iTunes setup on my iMac Pro with a variety of ripped CD files and some high res stuff, too, such as Jazz at the Pawnshop. I don't need my whole music collection, just a good sampling of things I currently want to listen to and use for demo's once I have some "real" speakers working here.
One obvious problem right away was that I didn't have any of the rubber pads used to support different device types, and would have to come up with a solution to relieve the stress on the 30 pin connector...
A little observation and experimentation, and I settled on the nice white coated phenolic board I like to use for building crossovers...
I ended up gluing the phenolic cut to size to the dock using marine epoxy... (in for a dime, in for a dollar)
The result was reasonably sturdy and steady...
Next step was to hook it up to the system.... via AES/EBU- I'm sort of a stickler for pro balanced interconnections, whether analog or digital.
The motivation is having a fast and friendly music selection here in San Ramon while most of my gear is in storage in Idaho- including my music server bits and pieces.
This was originally used in a bedroom system with a Berkeley Audio Alpha DAC- which Steve Manning now has.
This is the first DAC I ever heard that had imaging that was reminiscent of my vinyl setup from Colorado many years earlier.
The key to putting this together originally, and resurrecting it now, is the Cambridge Audio ID100 dock.
There wasn't any way to test this without a 30 pin pod, iPhone, or iPad, so I had to take this on faith that it probably still worked.
The solution on the iPad side proved to be easier than I expected- there are a lot of "refurbished with new battery" iPads on eBay, the last model year with 30 pin connector and max'd out storage generally goes for about $100. The vendor I picked said they were delivered in Apple packaging. This was true, and in fact, given the packaging and the iPad were absolutely pristine, and the battery completely discharged, I suspect I got an NOS part- "New Old Stock".
I spent a bit of time setting it up from scratch and NOT getting mail or other services working, so that it wouldn't use up storage space. I loaded up my iTunes setup on my iMac Pro with a variety of ripped CD files and some high res stuff, too, such as Jazz at the Pawnshop. I don't need my whole music collection, just a good sampling of things I currently want to listen to and use for demo's once I have some "real" speakers working here.
One obvious problem right away was that I didn't have any of the rubber pads used to support different device types, and would have to come up with a solution to relieve the stress on the 30 pin connector...
A little observation and experimentation, and I settled on the nice white coated phenolic board I like to use for building crossovers...
I ended up gluing the phenolic cut to size to the dock using marine epoxy... (in for a dime, in for a dollar)
The result was reasonably sturdy and steady...
Next step was to hook it up to the system.... via AES/EBU- I'm sort of a stickler for pro balanced interconnections, whether analog or digital.
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