It seems like it's never a dull moment at my end, the Chinese curse has reared its ugly head upon me a lot in this hobby.
Now My Behringer DSP9024 decides to blink endlessly at power up and cycles the start up screen endlessly with no activation, long story short, quick inspection of the power supply caps show signs of leaking electrolyte, now I have to find a good reliable supplier of good electrolytic capacitors and increase the working voltage to avoid future failure, see my photos below, they are a bit crappy, since I used a cell phone camera to take them.
See other images but in this one, you can see where I removed the 2200uf 16 volt capacitor C-85 and there is traces of electrolyte where the capacitor was located.
Now I have to wait till I get a set of new caps before using this thing again, I might be putting in a 25 to 50 WV instead of that 16 volt failure. Yes, before you say anything, I realize the remaining two 3300uf 35V caps C43 and C13 have electrolyte at their base on the PC board, those are being replaced as well, might go 50WV on those since those are 35 volts and failed.
Bruce.
they are nice when they are working but the psu crap in them.
Looks like you'll be without an audio processor for a while unless you want to find a free virtual processor for your computer while you wait for the new caps. You may want to consider purchasing either Stereo Tool or Breakaway Broadcast which does an extremely good job on the Amsterdam setting but just change the pre emphasis to 75 uS eq.
There will be none of that over driven base and the sound is very sweet. Those folks overseas really know their audio quality as apposed to USA based audio processing. I know Orban isn't too bad however and any good USA based audio processor would be pre 1984 based. This is when MTV was sued and you know the rest and that is why USA based audio processors are faulty.
Good Luck!!
Sorry about your problem, been down that road with two of my audio compressors and new caps fixed it fine.
Nichicon and Panasonic brand caps have a good reputation. In addition to raising the voltage rating, get caps rated at 105C rather than the usual 85C. Even if they are in a cool environment, the 105C caps are better.
Neil
Most manufacturers choose the lowest working voltage caps because they don't make room for larger sizes. Yes as suggested get ones with a much higher working voltage than the old ones are and if you need room you can with jumpers mount them in a different location. Also if they are just filter caps you can up the values and have a better filter. Again, manufacturers use the smallest in physical size they can get away with to save space.
Mark
Now is that a linear power supply and those caps still popped like that? They do look like cheap parts just from the silk screen printing on them.
Thelagacy: Now what did MTVs lawsuit do to processing in the USA? I thought radio sound has been rubbish for years and I haven't liked it, just thinking it was radio managers being followers, loudening up their sound because others wre doing it, I didn't know it was a conspiracy! Please talk about it more.
I've tried the demo of Break away, and the only setting I found to sound good was Reference, Classical, and Jazz, I'll have to test Amsterdamn and see what it's like.
Sonos 4 by Burnill has apparently sold to a distributor in Germany, so no more free versions to test at least for a while.
What I found interesting is that capacitors usually leak through the vents on the top side of the capacitor.
After removing C13 and C43, the largest of the 3 capacitors, it appears that the brown stuff is glue? I've seen in many power supplies where the filter caps were glued on to the PC board. I see no signs of electrolyte on those two caps, but as you seen in my photo above, C85 leaked through the negative pole on the bottom of the cap and left a dried puddle of electrolye on both the cap and pc board.
Using a VOM meter and reversing the meter probes in ohms range on the capacitor leads, the capacitor still charges and discharges, but that is not to say the value has not been lost and way out of spec.
I seen a youtube where someone created a video with the same issue, most people blame C85 for the issue, perhaps they are right since my C85 has shown signs of leaking.
I may replace those regulators as well IC26 which is an LM317 is right in circuit with C85, I know the DSP9024 can run hot even if the top cover air vents are not blocked by rack mounting.
Gotta run don't have time to edit this post, hopefully it has no typos.
Bruce.
Bad caps seem to be the biggest killer of all behringer gear, I have an autocom that is currently bricked from the same exact capacitor failing.
I strongly disagree with Legacy's statement regarding US Broadcast audio processors, the US makes some of the best in the biz. Don't blame the gear, blame the PDs that want their stations to be as loud as possible. If anything pro processing gear is the best it has ever been.
The reason for my statement is Rap Noise. After 1984 it plagued Radio and made America tone deaf and musically challenged. Gone were the Carver and gone were the KEF ers and replaced with Emerson and Daewoo and kids toy Stereo's. Oh and you had to buy a 30 inch subwoofer of 10000 watts.
This is why USA sucks.
Yes my DSP9024 has 6 NJM4580L's from JLC on the main board which is what the article at http://groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=6078.0 references.
Thanks for providing that link, makes for some interesting reading.
The author stated: Quote: "I replaced the NJM4580's with Burr-Brown OPA2228's which are an incredibly low-noise, high-precision operational amplifier. These things are 100 times, in most areas, better than the NJM4580's. End of quote from article.
I believe that is what you have in mind with your DSP9024 and other equipment that uses those NJM4580 ICs.
Bruce.
Strange to have such a cap problem, I know that it's so common in computer systems, video cards and monitors that work at high frequencies and need low ESR caps.
Lagasy: I thought it was Disco music that helped to change processing, because the heavy bass from the kick drum would punch holes in the audio, due to the high processing, so they needed a new approach and stations went to more multiband units like DAP.
I don't know if I blame Rap itself, it's just another pop music form like all of the trends to come about and (mostly young) people drive wanting to hear it. Radio Stations then respond by providing a steady diet, because they want the cume, and the music ecosystem is set up to respond around that music with more and more.
If anything, Radio Stations are guilty of dumbing down the populace due to formatics, not helping people to become educated about music and desire to be fans with depth of understanding, but instead treating music like a disposable product, a cheap thrill to be pirated on the net, because the audience doesn't care enough.
What if they'd cared about music they were playing all along, and actually built an audience of loyal fans around it, with good audio that respects the music? I think we'd be better off, no one music style dominating the charts, and maybe consolidation couldn't have happened, because listeners would require more attention to the music, not just being able to play top-20 oldies/country/pop across the whole country, and stations couldn't get away with things like low bit streams going out over the air like they do on some stations, or listeners would complain about the quality.
I agree about the audio quality being low, I like to think I listen to decent speakers and headphones, and every commercial station sounds distorted to me, only listenable at low volume. I can blow away the fidelity of every other radio station with an el cheapo FM transmitter from Dollar General and simple software limiting, HF limiting and correction to 75us in the audio.
I agree that processing is great today, but they use every advance against us, Radio Stations. Now it's DCC, Distortion Controlled Clipping, with its unique sonic signature, where a 'nasal' resonance gets added to music and especially voice. I liken the sound of DCC on a line of peaks to the sound of someone shifting around in a leather chair, but muted, or that the speaker has a loogie that they need to cough up, but can't because it's a software defined loogie. 🙂
Now I'm bagging on Radio Stations, but you see, that's the driver, if I was satisfied with radio, I wouldn't feel it was so urgent to respond with a station of my own.
Well this I can say, when I broadcast on the FM band I use 107.1MHz.
On 107.7 is WWRX Jammin' 1077
The music with my best description is all African American THUG music that sounds like the artist and music is being controled by a woman's vibrator at high speed. When I mimic it in person to other people, I take the edge of my hand and run it up and down over my adam's apple rapidly as I try to mimic the idiot singing the song about hate, killing and rape.
On 107.1MHz my weak signal exhibits the fluttering of Jammin' 1077 in the signal background, they are a VERY LOUD station, they are also owned by the owner of Connecticut's next strongest station WBMW 106.5MHz, John Fuller, also called Red Wolf Broadcasting Corporation. 106.5 http://www.wbmw.com/ is 25,000 watts, WWRX http://www.jammin1077.com/ although their city if license is Branford R.I. their tower is in North Stonington Connecticut, their original license was in Galesferry Connecticut, where their current studio is located along with WBMW, but, when a licensed station changes their city of license, they are allowed a power increase, even though, their tower and transmitter are still located at the same coordinates.
FCC info on WWRX
FCC info on WBMW
This guy Fuller owns the upper FM broadcast band from 106.1 to 107.9MHz, his two power house FM stations kill the front end stages of most FM receivers causing his stations to be the loudest on that end of the FM dial. He also owns several other transmitters in this area, a few are LPFM stations.
Although WBMW plays Delilah's love songs after dark every evening http://www.delilah.com/ it is a pretty good soft rock station.
But WWRX's heavy processing and thump and bump music to me is NOISE POLLUTION at it's best and is widely listened to by thugs and mostly African Americans who smoke weed and sell crack cocaine to stupid people who buy it.
Call it what you want, but I am very active in my community and know who listens to what and why. The fact is, WWRX's music is over processed and most likely a bit over the mod limit, but hey, they are a member of the NAB and have a commercial license, they can do as they please.
Bruce.
As the audio source of most music tracks are trashed with hypercompression, practically any audio processor is fatally compromised to start with.
I like multiband audio processing, and i do my best to avoid hypercompressed tracks, so i value my older cd's that do not use it.
Paul.
The USA sucks because of poor audio processing.