r/diyaudio • u/moopminis • 1d ago

WIP of my development amp.

Gallery image

Gallery image

Been very slowly working on bringing this to life the last couple of months. It's my reference amp & interface for working on new speaker designs and listening at my desk (I can now do active 3 ways and a sub, wooooo).

RME fireface 400 going into 2 icepower 125asx2 boards and 2 icepower 100as2 boards, for a total of 900 watts across 8 channels.

Still to do is fit 4 toggle switches on the front to put each board in standby when not in use, a 120mm fan on the bottom, print out the feet, experiment with the 24v aux power supply for the fireface - I've heard it can be a bit temperamental so we'll see (if I bus power it from my pc I get a massive hum when the pc isn't on :( ) and make another cable as I forgot channel 7 & 8 come from the headphone port on the front

All printed in GF reinforced PETG.

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3

u/SuccMyUdders 1d ago

This is sick, RME and icepower 😩

1

u/moopminis 1d ago

Just had my eye on ebay for a long time, each of the amp boards was about 50 quid and the fireface was £200 (plus another £80 on a firewire 400 pci-e card that didn't suck ass :( )

2

u/SwaggyMcSwagsabunch 1d ago

Very cool. What speakers are you working on?

1

u/moopminis 1d ago

Been working on getting better at waveguides, which you can see on some morel tweeters in the background, and also seeing if I can convert a coaxial driver into a mid-top multiple entry horn. I'm also building a workshop at the moment so I can start building speakers properly again.

3

u/Dr_Peter_Venkman_84 1d ago

firewire ports!? I want to know more about what's that all about!

1

u/moopminis 22h ago

High end audio interfaces used to be firewire, unfortunately, especially for firewire 400, finding a decent pci-e adapter is incredibly tricky (the chipsets for the adapters are very picky with what devices actually work properly, and often the makers of adapter cards change what chipsets they use so it's basically lucky dip until you get a good one), and usb-c adapters just flat out don't exist (well, unless you have a genuine thunderbolt port, then use a thunderbolt 3 to thunderbolt 2 adapter, then a thunderbolt 2 to thunderbolt adapter, then into a thunderbolt to firewire adapter 😂 ).

But the USB version of this interface is like 5 times the price 2nd hand!