Hi all, pleased to report that I’m joining the Cascade Club! Order was placed yesterday and I’m now in the production queue.
This is likely a question best answered by Daniel but posting it for the benefit of other Cascade owners who may cross the same bridge…
Due to space constraints in my particular set up, my Aurender is located in my office which is close but not adjacent to my listening room. Heretofore, I’ve gotten away with this arrangement by using the ProUSB/ISL interface to connect my Aurender and Select II DAC via a 50 foot fiber cable that runs in the crawl space beneath these two rooms. Once I take possession of the Cascade, my intention was to also place the Cascades’ DD in my office near my Aurender to afford greater isolation and free up shelf space in my listening room. However, if I were to pursue this arrangement, I believe I would lose the Cacade’s LED in the listening room and likely require an IR repeater to control the Cascade from the living room. Daniel, do you have any thoughts regarding my planned set up and/or the best way to “remote control” the Cascade if its DD was placed outside the listening room?
I’m not @Daniel_Francis (of course), but I’m taking the liberty of intervening anyway since the issue could also concern me.
Have a look here since I guess the best (and cleanest) way to remote control the DAC (and maybe also the equipment connected to it) via RS232.
Of course you’ll need a supervisor (Crestron, AMX, Control4, Savant, others) or a programmable remote control equipped with this capability (RTI, Harmony, others) and you are done
Another way, cheaper but also not that elegant (even if it works) is to buy and “IR extender on LAN cable” and this is what you have to type in google to find the availability of products in your area.
As you can see there is a transmitter and then a receiver with 4 outputs in this case, and you’ll just need one. Beetween them you have to run a CAT5e/6e cable of a maximum lenght of 450m (roughly 1476,38 feet, I guess enough for you application ).
The price here in Europe is almost 70 Euro, so you should be able to spend the same in your Country.
In this way you’ll have to point the MSB remote there you’ll place the transmitter and the volume will change accordingly.
Consider anyway that IR transmission is unidrectional while the RS232 is bidirectional (you got a feedback of the command sent and aquired) and plus on an home automation system you’ll have also a graphic feedback of your action or the info displayed on the DD of the DAC.
Thanks, gentlemen. These are both good ideas. If I proceed, I like the idea of controlling via RS232, via Savant which is the AVL automation platform we use at the house. That would provide me all the benefit of the DD’s LED interface in my listening room. While it’s unlikely, I wonder if Savant may already have MSB’s RS232 commands in their library? I will ask.
Saying that, it would be helpful to understand whether utilizing an RS232 connection could degrade the sonic performance of the DD since the RS232 cable would tie back our home’s main AV equipment racks in which a bunch of noisy equipment reside that are on a different power circuit (potentially opening the door for ground loops, etc). Daniel, perhaps you could share your thoughts on this?
If you need it, we have a google sheet of the full list of RS232 commands available for the Cascade. You can find it at the link below or on the Cascade support page on our website.
Hello all. Relatively new to MSB products and new to this forum. I currently own and enjoy a Reference DAC with DD. In my system, I have physically isolated (not in range of iR from listening chair) the DD into a remote location. I am able to do this using 12V trigger cable to PB and toslink control link to DAC, works well. This is important in keeping the aesthetics of my main rack compact and tidy. So far I have been winning the battle with FOMO on Cascade and now Palisades, but Jonathan/Francis/Dustin refuse to leave well enough alone (thank goodness). It probably won’t be long before I acquiesce to a current generation fast architecture product, but I’m not going down without a struggle.
Thinking ahead, I will still want to shift component(s) into my remote cabinet if moving to Cascade or Palisade. With the display shifted to the DD for the fast architecture Cascade and Palisades products, I would want to move the DAC+PB for Cascade into the remote cabinet, or DAC if going the Palisades route. Long analog iXLR interconnect cables will be a trade off, but one I may be willing to make. Thinking about power controls, I have a question for the forum. Will the iR sensor on the new Cascade/Palisades DD pass the power on/off signals to the DAC/PB through the optical link between DD and DAC (again, no iR line of sight to cabinet)? RS232 control would be ideal, but MSB does not support power on/off through RS232 (unfortunately…although I am sure there is a good reason). I know there are “work arounds”, but hoping there is a no fuss elegant solution to this layout option.
BTW, great forum, appreciate all the content on here from around the world, especially the insights from MSB engineers and technical sales.
For power on off we support a comprehensive 12v trigger system, with standby functionality, there is also a small 12v converter box which takes care of many edge cases for various system compatibility issues. Jonathan is an expert in this area so send him an e-mail.
If you power off the Analog Converter, the DD will got to sleep. So the ideal setup would be to keep the DD remote with RS-232 controls and leave the Analog Converter in your system connected with the 12V trigger system. There are indeed many options for ways to set this up.
There is a very good reason! When we turn our powerbase off, there is no power in the product to power the microcontroller to turn itself back on. Anything that turns “off” via RS232 is turning “mostly off” as it still needs power to turn itself back on. The Powerbase has no micro, so it has no RS232.
The 12V trigger and our 12V trigger adapter will work with any type of home automation system and any other product with a 12v trigger.
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