wanted( EU) : repair prodigy for Apogee AD16X/ no schematic

Looking for someone (preferable in europe) to check my Apogee AD16X

Channel 3-4 and 11-12 are dead.
Did a brief visual inspection on the PCB, I found a blown SMD cap on channel 4.
The digital side is beyond my knowledge.
Anyone who wants to dive into it ?

Have never seen one, and I doubt you'll find one.

Best to send it to Apogee, the repair charges are reasonable.

Regards,
Mark

andre tchmil said:

Looking for Apogee AD16X schematic.


Just got my Apogee back from a friend.
2 channels are dead.
Opened up the lid and found an SMD cap blown.
God knows what else.

Click to expand...

Biasrocks said:

Best to send it to Apogee, they're repair charges are reasonable.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately not in Europe.

I know of several expensive apogee pieces that has gotten scrapped simply because repair was way too expensive.

we badly need schematics for that reason

Jakob E.

gyraf said:

Biasrocks said:

Best to send it to Apogee, they're repair charges are reasonable.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately not in Europe.

I know of several expensive apogee pieces that has gotten scrapped simply because repair was way too expensive.

we badly need schematics for that reason

Jakob E.

Click to expand...

Correct.

Bummer.

I can say definitively that I've never seen a schematic for any Apogee product.

Mark

I've never seen either an apogee schem. Once managed to repair one... I cant remember what model it was... It had some very low value resistors burned, the ones that are coupling psu to each problematic chanel. And I had to replace a pair of opamps too. Patiently with a multimeter and a diy audio probe I was able to understand the analogic part of the circuit and find the failing parts, dont know if you could try...

Arnau

I did a quicky replace of the fried 10/63 SMD cap with a regular 4uf one.
I managed to get the signal leds light up  ;D
nothing more

Nice!! 

andre tchmil said:

I did a quicky replace of the fried 10/63 SMD cap with a regular 4uf one.
I managed to get the signal leds light up  ;D
nothing more

Click to expand...

One of our members had a similar problem. A fried tantalum capacitor near the power inlet on the board. He had other member  photograph the inside of a working Apogee ensemble. In order to get the correct replacement values. (Smoke had obscured the markings)
I guess the pair of apogee in Europe is not very straightforward. 

Sorry no AD16x here to photograph

bruce0 said:

andre tchmil said:

I did a quicky replace of the fried 10/63 SMD cap with a regular 4uf one.
I managed to get the signal leds light up  ;D
nothing more

Click to expand...

One of our members had a similar problem. A fried tantalum capacitor near the power inlet on the board. He had other member  photograph the inside of a working Apogee ensemble. In order to get the correct replacement values. (Smoke had obscured the markings)
I guess the pair of apogee in Europe is not very straightforward. 

Sorry no AD16x here to photograph

Click to expand...

PSU is OK here.
I'm suspecting the analog in path for the dead channels.
guys must have had the input super hot loaded.

As others have said, not seen schematics for the AD16X... there was a service note floating around the internet with the schematic for the PSU from the AD8000 though. Not of any use to you, but it did enable me to fix the failed PSU in my AD8000! Guess i got lucky... (the -18V reg had broken, 2991 I think...)

Apogee schematics are closely guarded secrets. I doubt they will pop up on the internet anytime soon.

...unless one of you guys reverse-engineer it... 

Jakob E.

gyraf said:

...unless one of you guys reverse-engineer it... 

Jakob E.

Click to expand...

Eeep! That would be like reverse-engineering a motherboard. 

oh, it's not that bad...

Looking for someone (preferable in europe) to check my Apogee AD16X

Channel 3-4 and 11-12 are dead.
Did a brief visual inspection on the PCB, I found a blown SMD cap on channel 4.
The digital side is beyond my knowledge.
Anyone who wants to dive into it ?

A person from the local Apogee agent told me that Apogee said they didn't even give schematics to their own techs.

I find Apogee equipment to be over-rated, and to fail too often. Apparently they are good to deal with apart from the fact that you have to return your Apogee POS to them to repair at great cost.
Built in obsolescence, a great way to manufacture!

As regards your AD16X, the likely fault is a dead opamp in the output section, look for d.c. offset on the output. If you take it to a service shop that can handle surface mount, they can likely fix your problem. (Another Apogee problem, badly designed outputs sensitive to load which fail prematurely.)

Please people, don't give these idiots your money! Buy something else. Put them out of business through lack of sales!

P.S. Anyone from Apogee, feel free to chime in!

no one ?

Hello Andre,
were you ever able to repair your AD16 or find someone that could repair it?

I have also 2x AD16 and one AD8000 with some dead channels that I need to repair.

Any info you guys might have could be really useful

thank you so much

For the record, reverse-engineering something like this is a walk in the park, compared to a computer motherboard ;D

A while ago i think i came across those blown-tantalum photos of whichever Apogee that was, and maybe apart from the digital side, i don't recall having seen anything that looked "magical".

In most cases, the analog stages are more or less "textbook" stuff, maybe with minor variations. With a DMM and an oscilloscope, or even a "signal tracer" probe connected to the HiZ input of a(nother) audio interface, tracing out the analog stages shouldn't be an issue at all