i dunno anything about electronics except that AC is different from DC. I bought an extra docking sled and i would like to have a stereo component that plugs into 110 and has RCA/serial/ethernet outs on the back, and is the same dimensions as a normal unit such as a cd player (17.5" i think?)

i live in SF. i would pay for someone to make ot for me. it doesn't have to be spectacular - it just has to work. painted particle board would even be ok (altho real wood or metal would be better).

thanks very much
joe
joe@joe.to

p.s. if anyone plays counter-strike i made a plugin that turns people into chickens www.joe.to/chicken.html

How much do you want to spend? Im sure someone on here is willing to do it. It just might not be too cheap considering the parts and time. Wouldn't be to hard to make though.

-Greg

hello -

here is a link to a post about a component box, there are a bunch of people talking about it as you can see from the number of replies. Perhaps you can join in on the discussion and learn something.

i guess parts + $50/hour? assuming it takes 2-4 hours

That links not working for some reason... try this one.

and i'd bet it's gonna take more than 2-4 hours... mine's taking way more than that! Hand cutting aluminum with a dremmel ain't exactly fast though... and after doing it once i'm sure it'd be faster a second time.

Another question ; ) Did you want this to add on to a sterio receiver or is it going to need and amp and places to plug in speakers. The reason I ask is that I have 2 Nakamichi sterio's here that aren't working and I have no use for. These could be hacked up a bit and made into nice a empeg component box, the only thing is that I dont think there would be room to add an amp in there. They may not be the right hight but I can check.

-Greg

and i'd bet it's gonna take more than 2-4 hours..

Yup, without a real bench and bench tools, I'd say my humble effort took at least that long. I may have spent 2 hours just filing the opening for the sled by hand after cutting it out with a jigsaw. I have a Dremel, too, but, for better or worse, those little bits don't remove a lot of material quickly. Aluminum is pretty reasonable ot work with, but it still takes time. I got an e-mail asking if I could build another, but I am not set up for it. If somebody was, I think it would be a reasonable proposition to make some in a batch of 10, say.

Side note, FWIW: With aluminum filings flying all over the place there's the potential to scratch the front of the anodized plate. One thing I did before using the jigsaw was to cover the entire front of the piece with two thicknesses of that wide, blue (low-residue) masking tapoe.

And Jim IS the dremel king! He helped me out when I had to dremel my dash... an $80 mistake if you mess up! But all went well!

what would a reasonable price be?

it sounds like you guys are engineering a really high-quality one. i just want a way to stick my unit into the sled when i get home from work, turn on my stereo and listen to it like a cd player. it doesn't have to look good.

it sounds like i should just keep sticking it on top of my stereo and plugging everything in by hand, if it's gonna cost $800 (ac, etc)

Hopefully by the end of this weekend i'll have mine finished along with a pretty comprehensive "how to". You could build one yourself really easily. The hardest part is cutting the holes in the metal, everything else is pretty much off the shelf. Once i finish this one, I'll consider makin' ya one. I just wanna see what the final cost is to me for all the parts and time, and consider how i'd do it faster a second time around, and if the $ would be worth my time, of which i have very little.

Oh, and on second thought.... if you really just wanna plug it into a sled... you could always just have a sled sitting on top of your stereo without a case. Then all you'd have to do is mount the ethernet plug and AC, and you're done. The RCA's would just stay plugged up.

I will measure what I have when I get home and if the boxes I have will work out I think I can put some thing together for you.

-Greg

I just received my 60GB Rio Car from Sonic Blue about four days ago. My car is at the mechanic getting some stuff fixed, so I won't be able to think about installing it for another week or so. However, I have been playing with it and I have to say that this thing is freakin' *awesome*. I was up until 3:30am last night ripping CDs with LAME 3.92 (--alt_preset standard) in anticipation!

Anyway, back to my reply on this topic. When I hooked the unit up to my home stereo, I hear a lot of noise when I turn the volume up a decent amount. I can hear a constant digital chattering noise when the unit is on, and I can hear two distinct whines going up and down when the hard drives spin up/down.

I don't think it's the electronics. I'm running a Sony TA-E9000ES preamp into a Sunfire Cinema Grand 5chx400w amp, with Magnepan 3.6s up front. When the Rio is not connected but right next to the stereo, it's silent. When I have it hooked up with a long RCA came to get it away from the stereo, I still hear the noise. So, it's not noise induced by interference, but noise in the signal. I'm sure some of this is the fact that the outputs are only 1V when hooked up for home, compared to the 2V for the rest of my hi-fi gear.

Does anyone else hear the chattering and hard drive stuff on your home stereo? I contemplated building a home dock until I ran into this. Maybe something's wrong with my unit. Any other datapoints would be welcomed!

- Chris (back to ripping MP3s)

First, please do the following checks regarding your connections to the home stereo:

1) Make sure you are not plugged into the home stereo's PHONO inputs. Player myst be connected to CD or TAPE inputs. FAQ entry here.

2) Turn the volume on your home stereo all the way down. Then turn the volume on the empeg all the way up to 0db maximum (but not overdriven past 0db). Then slowly turn up the volume on your home stereo until the music is at the appropriate listening volume.

3) Press PAUSE on the player (top button). Is there still noise? If not, cool, you have solved the problem.

4) If you still have noise, you might have a DC ground loop. FAQ entry here. Although this FAQ entry describes a ground loop in the car, ground loops can also develop in home stereos, too. Try powering the player from a different AC socket. Double check the cabling and make sure neither the cabling nor the player's chassis is touching any metal anywhere.

Let us know how it goes.

Tony, very thorough response - thanks. You will be happy to know that, thanks to your suggestions, the problem is solved!

Originally when I was troubleshooting this, I did go into a little more detail than I mentioned in my post. I tried pausing the empeg during playback, and the noise was still there. I also tried hooking up the empeg's RCA outputs directly to the Sunfire power amp, and the noise was even worse.

In your post, you mentioned it was still possible to have grounding problems with home use. This clued me in that it might be a power supply issue, where the power supply might not be locking down the ground tightly enough. I have two empeg power supplies - the tiny one-piece one that came with the unit, and the $30 extra power supply which is a big brick with a separate standard IEC power cord. I originally used this bigger unit, thinking that this big $30 brick power supply will be cleaner than the tiny thing included with the empeg.

Well, based on your post, I switched back to the tiny wall wart unit, and the problem is SOLVED! Playback was absolutely clean. I am totally thrilled!

Who should I contact about exchanging this power supply for one of the small one-piece wall-wart kinds? There was the car stereo email address posted elsewhere, is that the right one? It sucks to pay $30 (plus shipping!) for such a tiny thing, but I'd just be happy to have a power supply that's clean for the main stereo.

Thanks again for your time. Now a very happy customer (well almost... did I mention I still need a red display to match my car? Arrrgh!),

- Chris

The fact that one power supply caused a ground loop and the other power supply did not cause the ground loop, does not mean the power supply is faulty.

DC Ground loops can happen on even the BEST of equipment.

I'm guessing the brick power supply simply needed its ground lifted. You can probably solve this problem by using an ordinary ten-cent hardware-store ground-plug adapter with the brick power supply.