Great deal on a 6 channel amp

[Marbles_00]

Well I wouldn't undergo the mode that Chad does off his linked thread and put the RCA jacks right in the amp and wire to surface mount components if you have never soldered before...it is just not advisable.

You don't even have to cut the 6 pin DIN harness. Just use the part that I've specified earlier in the thread (and in your other thread). It's a panel mount 6 pin DIN to wire leads (Digikey has tones if your in North America). The two tabs on the side are the connection to shield (returns in this case). Each wire will then go to the center pin of a RCA. You can even scrap the guts of the AIP and mount everything in the AIP enclosure if you wanted to keep things "clean" looking.

Hope this helps.

Here's the link to the panel mount DIN connector again:
http://www.cui.com/pdffiles/MD-60PL100.pdf

[smata67]

I've soldered onto surface mounted components once, when I added a resistor to solve the washed out picture on the Dell P990 monitor (great to know about, I just picked up another P1110 with the same problem for free, this is a .99 fix), so I know the difficulty level. I used a magnifying lamp and yes, it can be challenging. I'd probably have to get the pencil tip for my WESD51, I currently just have the standard chisel they ship with the unit.

I do want the preamp capability and actually I could even live with the hiss, this is not a hifi setup I need, just thought I'd look into getting rid of it if I could.

Regardless, Etom has been very accommodating, too bad he doesn't have more of these to sell.

You guys need to come up with a good use for the hundreds of preamps he has left, maybe to add tone control to the T-amp, but if they are noisy, no sense.

[summerall]

Ok this may be a stupid question about this amp.

If I use this amp to power speakers in 6 rooms throughout my house how would I mute just certain rooms? For example what if I wanted music playing in only rooms 1,2,5 but no music (muted) in rooms 3, 4, 6 can this amp do this? Or can this be done with xlobby?

[scottw]

With 2 speakers in each room you can only do 3 rooms with 1 amp, 1 channel per speaker. I only have 1 speaker in each room right now so 6 is possible. The way I do it now is to have 1 copy of winamp running for each zone and the volume is controlled by winamp thru XL.

Does that make sense????


EDIT: Oh and NEVER a stupid question, that is what the forums are for

[summerall]

scottw

Thanks for clarifying the fact that if I have 2 speakers per zone then I'll only get 3 zones.

However, I'm still a bit confused about how each zone is independantly controlled. Doesn't this AMP only have 1 (Left & Right RCA) input? How do you get each sound card input into the AMP?

Don't you need 1 sound card per zone? Then each sound card outputs to the AMP's input? But there is only 1 input from the pics of the AMP on ebay.

Thanks

[sharp_1]

Ok this may be a stupid question about this amp.

If I use this amp to power speakers in 6 rooms throughout my house how would I mute just certain rooms? For example what if I wanted music playing in only rooms 1,2,5 but no music (muted) in rooms 3, 4, 6 can this amp do this? Or can this be done with xlobby?

Yes, like Scott said you would have to run single speakers to each zone if you were to use just one of these amps.

Your output from each of the instances of winamp will need to be in mono. See "Somewhat Mono" winamp plugin for running winamp in mono. You will also need to set up the Kx drivers to control the feeds on your 5.1 soundcard setup here.

In order to control each zone in xl you will need to set up separate instances of winamp, make sure you copy all the winamp files into each zone directory first, example in xl setup>general>music:
c:\zones\kitchen (zone 1)\winamp.exe
c:\zones\livingroom (zone 2)\winamp.exe
c:\zones\bedroom (zone 3)\winamp.exe
and so on for all 6 zones.
Create yourself some zone buttons from 1 to 6 and assign each button to an event like this:

After you push your newly created zone 1 button you will be able to use all of the buttons on your music screen to control zone 1 as long as you have zone 1 selected. When you push the zone 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 buttons the control will change to selected zone and away you go.

Hope this helps!!!

[sharp_1]

scottw

Thanks for clarifying the fact that if I have 2 speakers per zone then I'll only get 3 zones.

However, I'm still a bit confused about how each zone is independantly controlled. Doesn't this AMP only have 1 (Left & Right RCA) input? How do you get each sound card input into the AMP?

Don't you need 1 sound card per zone? Then each sound card outputs to the AMP's input? But there is only 1 input from the pics of the AMP on ebay.

Thanks

You will need build something like this to use all the channels independently.

or you could take a look at what chad did over here:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/c ... 0_0138.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/c ... 0_0156.jpg

[summerall]

sharp_1 & scottw

This is all making more sense now.

Let me review what I think I've learned here - Looks like if I get one of these amps, I'd be using it mainly to drive 3 zones (2 speakers per zone). 1/8 plug to Y RCA splitter from sound card would go into the input of the AMP (L&R RCA input). If I wanted to independently control each of those 3 zones I would need to "mod" in a solution as this amp only has 1 input. Even though XL has multi-zone capabilites it won't do much without a hardware "mod" to this amp. This this correct?

Thanks again!!!

[Marbles_00]

summerall,

1/8 plug to Y RCA splitter from sound card would go into the input of the AMP (L&R RCA input).

The actual amp has a 6-pin DIN connector as its input. Each channel goes to each pin and the return is actually the shield of the DIN. The 'amp kit' is actually two components. The amp itself, and a small preamp called an AIP. The AIP has two RCA input jacks. What it does is that it takes a stereo input and distributes full audio to 4 of the 6 channels. The AIP also has a built in LFE crossover that will be amplified on the last two channels. Not to mention that the AIP is pretty noisy, as a few of us have found out. If your going to use the AIP, be aware of these things.

You can use the amp without the AIP module, but you will have to do one of the following:
1) Cut one end of the DIN connector off and wire 6 RCA jacks to the harness.
2) Use this part: http://www.cui.com/pdffiles/MD-60PL100.pdf (or something similar) and wire your RCA jacks to the end of the wire leads. This will save you from destroying the DIN harness that comes with the amp
3) Make your own DIN harness from scratch
4) Do the Chad mod, that can be found on the second link he provides, close to the end of the thread. As I stated above, unless you have some skill soldering to surface mount components, I would steer clear of this.

[scottw]

Even though XL has multi-zone capabilites it won't do much without a hardware "mod" to this amp. This this correct?

Exactly!!! You need to have a separate input and output for each zone thru the amp. Most amps have 1 input and several outputs that play the same input. This amp has the capabilities to have 6 inputs and 6 outputs after you mod the cable, 1 input/output = 1 speaker. The best price I could find for a multizone amp was one posted on this forum a while back for $600. This one cost me $30 shipped and works great for what I need it for.


How are getting one of these, I thought they were all gone off ebay???
Are they back or do you know someone who is selling one?


Hope this helps and post back if you have any more questions.

[summerall]

How are getting one of these, I thought they were all gone off ebay???
Are they back or do you know someone who is selling one?

I'm at work right now so I don't have the link bookmarked but there is one up on ebay. Last night I saw it was up to $50+ and I think there were 1-2 days left on the auction.

When I get home I'll try to post the link.

But don't bid on it cus I want it

[scottw]

No I wouldn't do that. So it's just one...you don't have to post the link I don't want you to loose it.

I didn't know if the original seller was back, Etom, I think was his name.


Thanks for the info and let us know if you get it

[smata67]

I just wanted to report back that I went ahead and made a connector to bypass the preamp altogether and the hiss is GONE. Since Etom sent me a replacement preamp and it too had the hiss, I'm guessing that it is just normal for that preamp. If you want to get rid of the hiss, bypass the preamp.

[Marbles_00]

Another one finally sees the light We've only been telling you that since... Sorry, I couldn't resist.

[summerall]

My 6channel amp came in the mail today. Looks like a really solid amp. I've just started playing around with it. I'm using the control head now but eventually I want to get rid of it. I'll post more impressions as I tinker with it a bit more.