My Own Build PCB on PCB Way

I never build my own PCB ever in my life before.

I always thought making a PCB for my electronic project is difficult. It is simply by the reason that making a PCB in the old ways is troublesome. It was all started by preparing the empty plain copper board and start making the traces on the paper screen, then located and drawing the components size manually. After its done, the layout screen is print to the PCB by using an iron, which often the printing not fully attach to the PCB and need correction manually. The pain is not stopping yet; you need to soak the PCB with the printing on it to the acid (that I also don't know what kind of acid is). The acid function is to peel out the copper on the PCB that not yet covered by the printed screen.

Is it done? Not yet! After it soaked and cleaned, the PCB need to drill for many holes as the components required to put on top of it, then clean it again with fine sand paper. Besides for the trouble when making the PCB, I also found for the finished PCB doing this way always looking cheap and unprofessional. I also worried about the longevity of the PCB, especially for the copper traces are easily oxidize because directly exposed to the air, which effect to the electronic connection overall.

That is why in this post, I will share my experienced design and making my own PCB at pcbway.com

Concerning DC-offset From Vintage Multibit DAC

This post is about sharing my experience for the present of DC offset at the output of a DAC, especially when we build it by our own, we want to make sure it is safe to the equipment after it. Since the DAC is considerably the top-chain in the audio system, so it is important to look this issue in the first place.

DC offset is a nightmare, especially when the equipment after the DAC such as preamp or the power amplifier is not using any capacitor or transformers in the signal path to blocking the DC present at the input. Just a small amount of DC, let's say 100 mV at the input of an amplifier will multiple by the gain from the amplifier, plus its current, will harm to the speaker's driver. In most cases, it will burn the driver's coil.

DC is inaudible, but it moves the driver cone. It creating the heat to the woofer driver coils and burn it. It is safe for the tweeter since the capacitor included in the cross-over network inside the speakers will protect it, act as DC blocking to the driver.

This post will explore the vintage multibit DAC that naturally have DC offset at the analog output and how to solve these problems.