Hi Guys
A technical reply from me, while the boss is away this weekend ;)
The CVIO model requires the CVIO circuit board to be fitted inside the
Cirklon, and the 25 pin connector needs fitted in place of the blanking
plate on the back. The break-out box is also included in the £200 cost of
the CV option. (The price does not include fitting the CV board if the
upgrade is bought later than the Cirklon)
If anyone who buys the basic model wants to upgrade at a later date, Colin
can fit the CVIO board and connector to your Cirklon for a small fee plus
the cost of shipping each way. Otherwise you can fit the CVIO board
yourself which requires a similar skill-level as fitting a new hard disk in
a PC.
Setting the extra cost for the CVIO option at £200 was a bit of a stab in
the dark. At the time Colin set the selling prices for the first run he was
tied up with getting everything finalised for production of Cirklon itself,
and had not yet fully considered the design details of the break-out boxes.
I've mentioned to customers who have enquired about the second production
run that the price of the CVIO option may increase dependant on break-out
box design. (FYI....I'll be sending out emails around early August to
request payment to confirm orders for the second production run of Cirklon -
delivery may be around September - this date is not confirmed yet. Around
80 people have so far confirmed to me that they intend to purchase from the
second production run. If anyone else wants to be included please drop me
an email to sales@sequentix.com )
More than half of the customers who ordered from the first production run
have opted to go for the CVIO model. I've collated the replies to the
break-out box questions I requested from the CV customers:
There was a 50/50 split between desktop and rackmount break-out box
preference. A few customers mentioned that they would be interested in a
euro-rack break-out module, which I've mentioned to Colin and he said we
will be able to offer this as an option.
Only a handful of customers preferred banana jacks, and the rest were fairly
evenly split between preferring 3.5mm or quarter inch sockets. A few
customers would ideally like a combination of socket sizes.
As Colin mentioned, he's aiming to despatch the remaining Cirklons by the
end of this coming week. That means he'll have some time available to
devote to the break-out boxes. I will be emailing all customers who are
awaiting break-out boxes with information on options at that stage. I've
uploaded photos of the desktop break-out box prototype that one of our
customers has been using, and also the rackmount prototype that Colin put
together last week. The colours and designs are not yet finalised but it
gives you an idea of layouts.
Here's a copy of a reply Colin gave me to answer a customer last week, which
is also of relevance to this post:
The breakout box takes the 24 signal pins from the DB25 analogue bus
connector, and connects each one to an output socket.
I have PCBs for a DB25 input board that fans out the signals to three 10-way
ribbon cables.
Then there are three x 8 way socket boards, for CVs 1 to 8, CVs 9 to 16 and
gates 1 to 8.
I had planned for these to be made dual purpose, with spaces for
quarter-inch sockets overlaid on the spaces for 3.5mm sockets.
However, that makes for kind of a waste of space between the 3.5mm sockets,
so I think we will do separate boards for each type.
Manual wiring of banana sockets is looking to be too time consuming, so
we'll be doing 1/4" or 3.5mm only.
However, the hole size for the 3.5mm jacks will also take a banana jack, so
a 3.5mm breakout would be easily converted to banana by removing the 3.5mm
sockets and wiring in a banana.
The difficulty with combining banana and quarter inch jacks would be the
need for two different sizes of panel aperture.
That could be resolved with the use of a 3.5mm sized enclosure, with some
holes drilled out for the quarter-inches.
To summarise, banana + quarter-inch should be possible, with a bit of end
user customisation.
Cheers
Barbara
Barbara Fraser
Sequentix Music Systems