1. WOW!
2. Advices and questions
3. Northstar 24/96 digital to digital converter

Advices and questions
Hello! I was extremely pleased to find your website the other day while I was looking for shelving projects to build to house my tv and stereo components.
I always had an interest in electonic gadgets and stereo equipment, though I am not an audiophile. The FleXy table is an amazing looking shelf unit and incredibly cheap! I especially like the double FleXy design. I plan on constructing one soon.

I was reading your January Editor's Corner and I wonder if you have ever considered using one of the several online translators available. I tried using the AltaVista translator on some of your Italian pages and it was able to do quite a bit of the text.
It isn't perfect, but I imagine it would cut your translating time significantly and it's free. There are others that might have better or worse success at Italian to English translation, but the AltaVista site I mentioned is at: http://babelfish.altavista.digital.com/
Hope that helps. :)

Some questions for you...I live in Canada so I am not sure where I would look to find the supplies listed for your cable projects. Would they all be available through Radio Shack? Like the specific shrink wrap or the low loss satellite cable? Have you had any correspondence with any other Canadian DIY project makers who could help me with supplies?

I just read your article on the Star cable and you mentioned adding a ferrite ring to the end of each cable. First, what is a ferrite ring?
Where do you get them, and what are they supposed to do for the cable?
Lastly, by "each end of the cable" do you mean just before the 4 conductors are paired and twisted to form the 2 leads? The second article makes no mention of a ferrite ring, so I thought i would ask what that was all about.

Also, is there a website or resource for someone such as I who has no background in electronics to get started in basic loudspeaker construction?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks. Keep up the great work!
Leon Samadi - E-mail: lsamadi@sympatico.ca

LC
Dear Leon,
of course I already know Babelfish. The problem is that if you want good translations you need a human being, not a machine, especially considering the HiFi jargon is nonsense to translating softwares :-) And yes, I can do part of the work with an automatic translator, but then I have to completely re-edit it. The bottom line is that I am way faster doing all the job starting from scratch.

As for our cable DIY projects, I strongly suggest you to join our Forum where many TNT readers have already built our cables with satisfactory results. I'm sure someone could help you finding the right source for satellite cables and stuff like that. Anyway, both radioShack, RS or Maplin should have this stuff in stock.
The same applies to ferrite rings. But you can find these just looking at the cables of your personal computer....yes! Those cylinders are ferrite rings and they have been placed there to shield the cables from interferences. And if they work well on your computer, monitor and printer, they work on your Star cable as well. So put 1 ferrite clamp (or ring) at each end of the cable, it doesn't really matter if before or after the four cables become two.

With respect to speakers building, there are so many websites out there that I can mention just few of them. Being politically correct I suggest you to visit a vast collection of links to DIY sites you can find at Audioworld and start browsing from there. Again, our Forum could be the right place to ask Absolute Beginners' questions regarding electronics.
Stay tuned!
Lucio Cadeddu

Northstar 24/96 digital to digital converter
Hi Lucio,
My name is Eric and I am an audiophile from Los Angeles. I read a review you wrote about North Star DAC where you mentioned they were coming up with a 24/96 digital to digital converter. I am wondering if you happened to hear it yet. Have you? Sincerely,
Eric - E-mail: vitality@flash.net

LC
Dear Eric,
the promised 24/96 digital to digital converter is already available and it is called Model 4. This upsampler takes the 16/44 digital output of any CD transport and converts it into a 24/96 digital output. Of course the Model 4 needs a 24/96 D/A converter, such as the Model 3 for example.
Other Companies are making similar devices and probably the best known are those from dCS, ready for the 24/192 format...and expen$ive.
The Model 4 should be rather inexpen$ive and I hope to get a sample to review, as promised by the Northstar staff, anytime soon. Stay tuned,
Lucio Cadeddu

© Copyright 2000 Lucio Cadeddu