828 MkII Humming!

[buenavista]

For anyone that still uses these I just wanted to mention that I finally ditched my 828mkii. I got a traveler original version and love it. Zero noise! And little or no heat. There are some feature differences but they sound identical to me. You can pick one up for a song and a dance ebay. I also tried a firewire ultralite mkiii which was fine but I didnt really need the dsp and I thought the traveler sounded just as good. Also the dsp cuemix interface is a bit much. They all take the same driver set so swapping them is a breeze--on windows it is anyways.

[mikehalloran]

Mine is as good as the day I bought it. I only use it when the session involves tracking, however, so it has very few hours compared to most.

I expect to replace it in the next year after I get an iMac without FireWire. Thunderbolt requires external monitors to be at the end of the chain as does the FW to TB adapter. I neeed two external monitors so that just isn’t an option for me unless I continue to use a DisplayLink box over USB in Mojave to enable another monitor. I’m planning to move beyond that and am looking at 4K and 5K monitors. The current iMac supports a pair of 4K while the iMac Pro supports a pair of 5K.

Time to upgrade from my 828mkII.

[henris42]

After recapping, I was still annoyed by the rather loud PSU transformers. You could hear the 50Hz hum 10 feet away.

I fixed that, by replacing the transformers for closed, potted ones. They are Polish Breve units, TPZ18/2X115/2X6V. They are bit smaller power than originals but seems they are easily big enough. No heat issues -also the fact that they are 6V instead 6.3 reduces the heat output a little. I had to drill new holes to the PCB and reroute some traces, but it was no biggie if you have experience in this sort of thing. It is a bit tight fit.. I also removed the phantom power transformer as I don't have any need for it.

Its now very quiet, you can hear hum only if you put your ear to it.

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[HCMarkus]

I fixed that, by replacing the transformers for closed, potted ones.

Awesome! So glad your fix and the details your post includes will be here for others in times of need!

Thanks for sharing

[henris42]

Sure. Btw other thing I found was that multiple of these interfaces work properly only with external word clock. The manual says the Firewire ASIO driver would distribute the clock, but that simply doesn't work. Everything started working like magic when I bound them to external 96kHz clock.