Behringer ADA8000 Black Lion Audio Mod

[Andy Peters]

I dont see any mention of it on the BLA site?

Yeah, it's not directly specified on their site. It's a similar thing to their alesis ai-3 mod, evidently uses the same a/d and d/a chips:

http://www.blacklionaudio.com/AI3.html

If you email or call them, I'm sure they'll get into info on it.

The ADA8000 is basically what's in the Wavefront (Alesis' semiconductor biz) data sheets as a reference design. Add a simple 4046-based PLL to generate the WDCLK for the converters and the ADAT transmit and receive devices, and there it is. I suspect that the AI-3 is similar; the Behringer adds mic preamps and adjustable input levels.

Note that the ADCs and the DACs only have word-clock inputs; they have have built-in PLLs to generate the modulator clock so "high-quality" external clocking probably won't make any difference.

Half an hour with a rework set-up and a handful of decent op-amps and you can do the Black Lion mod yourself.

-a

[Spark]

Maybe spray paint the ADA8000 flat black? & Replace the knobs?

Splashes of day glo pink on that would get a retro late 80's early 90's rack look...

Then it would look like an old piece of ART gear. Is that really an improvement?



(I had one of those for a few years, I was jealous of all the guys with those fancy Quadraverbs haha)

[calaverasgrandes]

Half an hour with a rework set-up and a handful of decent op-amps and you can do the Black Lion mod yourself.

-a

I have an 828MKII with the BLA mod. I had looked inside pre and post mod and have to say, my soldering skills arent up to doing pins that close together. Even if I had a temp controlled weller.

IMHO it's not worth putting out the cash to upgrade a box that only does 44/48k. you can argue back and forth about whether its any benefit to record at 88/96k or 192k, but the fact is that 44/48k was the standard 10 years ago. I am not trying to invest in digital gear unless it has higher sampling rates than I need. It all depreciates so damn fast ya know!

[starbearer76]

yeah... the money you would have spent on a reworking setup and the op amps to do the mod... you will have spent way more money on doing it yourself.

plus... you don't just get a rework station.... thats the first part. next is actually getting good at reworking. then also having in mind to check the data sheets on those op amps to see what temperature they can handle during the reworking process. then the next part... are your hands steady enough? can you do it with out blowing other surface mount parts off like resistors off the pcb with the reworking gun?... they blow off of so fast and you don't where they went... oh... and what happens if you break a trace? do you have the steady hands with tiny 26 gauge wire to solder to the to pin of the ic to the next point?

im sorry, but if you were to do this for your first time... it would take a while before you got the hang of it.

i work at BLA, and I've seen some guys who have been to electronics school for a while and they never get the hang of reworking ic's .

I would never suggest that any one try reworking surface mount components on their gear unless they've had a couple weeks to practice it first.

Last but not least... we have gotten units from people who "tried doing it themselves" only to fix what damage they did to it and doing the mod ourselves anyway. LOL!!!!!

surface mount soldering isn't like dusting crops, boy!!! you can fry an op amp or put one in backwards on accident and blow the secondary on the transformer... that would end your mod real quick now wouldn't it?

yes... i did just modify a line from star wars.

[starbearer76]

oh... plus... even though its not talked about that much on our site, just call our sales guys at 773-549-1885. we do offer it and our sales guys will be happy to tell you all about it.

don't go with the ada 8000. it sounds like shit before the mod... and it sounds well... ok after the mod. i mean... behringer. thats german for... shitty sounding gear for the faction of the price of decent sounding gear.

the ai-3 on the other hand sounds awesome after the mod. im not just saying that, because i work there, but also because I had one and used it for about two years.

i also have a tango 24.... i actually did sell my alesis because the tango 24 sounds even better. I was able to really rework the tango 24 big time and it has sonic qualities similar to our 002 signature mod, and even is on par with some sonic qualities of the digi design hd192. (abviously though i don't have anywhere as near the dynamic range as the 192).

tango 24's are very hard to find though. ai-3's can still be found almost weekly on ebay. tango's are also double the cost of the ai-3, but the tango does have word clock in which i really wish the ai-3 had.

yes... we modify the tango as well. won't sound as good as mine (id have to charge you more than you'd be willing to spend), but will still be on par with our 002 tweak head. the ai-3 mod i would compare to the apogee ensemble, especially when the ai-3 mod includes our latest upgrade package which is around an extra 150 bucks were we decouple the converters with boutique audiophile grade caps, and we clean up the power supply a bit.

[calaverasgrandes]

Thats good to hear that you guys are open to modding other stuff than strictly whats listed on the website. I had thought about doing the AI3 thing a while back, but then I realized I really like 88.2.
any higher bitrate sleeper converters you might recommend? Esp ones that can bear a modding al BLA?

[starbearer76]

we do aspire to eventually come out with an external adat light pipe in and out 8 channel converter that will also do smux which means that you'll be able to do 88/96 but you'd only be able to do 4 channels in this mode. when doing 44/48 you'll be able to use all 8.

this is the same on all external adat devices.

there are not any other adat external devices that i know of except... there was one made by RME. I forget the name of it though. im not the biggest fan of their stuff, but i do know that unit will do the smux 88/96. again, you'll be stuck with just 4 I/O unless you go back down to 44/48.

we don't normally mod those, but we very well could.

[Andy Peters]

surface mount soldering isn't like dusting crops, boy!!! you can fry an op amp or put one in backwards on accident and blow the secondary on the transformer... that would end your mod real quick now wouldn't it?

yes... i did just modify a line from star wars.

I appreciate your paraphrase of Han Solo's jibe a year after the start of this thread, so in that spirit I will mod my signature paraphrase of the caption from that famous New Yorker cartoon: "On the internet, nobody knows that you're an electrical engineer."

I mean, today's fun was discovering the cause of some weird behavior in a first-article PCBA I was bringing up. The idiot engineer (that would be me) mislabeled a net in the schematic so when the board was laid out two things that should not have been connected were -- and they were connected underneath an MSOP8. So I hopped over to the rework bench, fired up the Metcal, put the board under the stereoscope, removed the part, cut the trace with an X-Acto, put the same part back on the board and voila -- Kirchhoff's Current Law still applies.

Anyways: I agree that people with no rework experience should not try to modify SMT PCBAs. Actually, I think that people with no electronics-design experience should generally not try to modify anything at all. After all, if your through-hole board has sockets installed so you can swap op-amps to your heart's content, you can easily plug that $20 OPA627 in backwards. And there's no soldering involved! (NB: I fucking hate sockets.)

But if the DIYer has the patience and the willingness to spring for the proper tools, I don't see why he couldn't learn to do the rework. I think the kits by Five Fish and others are a great way for the newbie to learn how to stuff a PCBA. (I built a few PAIA kits when I was a kid.) The parts are a manageable size and the typical project isn't so complicated that when it doesn't work (and it won't, the first few times), the builder won't get completely frustrated and give up. I don't know if any kit vendors offer SMT projects, but they should -- that would do the DIY/"Maker" community a good service.

At some point, the builder has to blow something up, because he won't learn how to troubleshoot if he doesn't. The trick is to avoid blowing up something that's expensive (like a CCD) or killing someone.

-a

[Aj]

What all is involved in the Tango mod? I've got 3 Tango 24s, still humming along nicely... always wondered if I might get appreciable results if I recapped it with better components.

[kjcoral]

yes... we modify the tango as well. won't sound as good as mine (id have to charge you more than you'd be willing to spend), but will still be on par with our 002 tweak head. the ai-3 mod i would compare to the apogee ensemble, especially when the ai-3 mod includes our latest upgrade package which is around an extra 150 bucks were we decouple the converters with boutique audiophile grade caps, and we clean up the power supply a bit.

not trying to be a dick at all but i e-mailed y'all about moddin a tango 24 about 8 months or so ago and was told you would not mod it. as fred willard once said "wha happn'd?" i'm thrilled to hear you guys are doin it now but am curious to why it changed. oh and how much will the tango mod be?

thanks!