Need help with Proceed PAV/PDSD

I have the PAV (w/o the DSD) and have had problems with it getting hot if it's not well ventilated. I had mine located in a rack with about 5" air overhead (closed back and sides though). I would expect this to be enough for a preamp, but one time when playing it for some time it started acting up, before shutting down entirely. My suggestion is to check the ventilation around the unit and if it's in a rack think about a fan.

I have used a PAV/PDSD pair for a number of years without incident. The PAV recently did have a power supply problem that was repaired locally. They also replaced a number of caps that were leaking, returning the unit to pristine sound. The PAV does get surprisingly warm, so needs good ventilation. I would not stack the units, no matter how neat that might look. I have another PAV that I've used for decades, and it also gets very warm, so I suspect it's endemic to the design. I use my pair for both music and HT -- they do produce fine sound.

db

Isolated the Problem to the Modular balanced output
card for the Front Left Right channel.
Luckily the unit I have supports 7.1 output, and I was able to "Borrow" an exact card from another channel...
Now down to 5.1 but working great until card replaced/serviced.
They certainly do not build them like this anymore...

The Proceed PAV/PDSD are built very well indeed. Do you think it's coincidence or causality that you upgraded the firmware to support 24/96 on the front left right channel then needed to replace the balanced output card for the front left right channel. Who did the firmware upgrade and what did it entail?

db

DB,
What happend was that I had received the unit with an earlier firmware. Updated the firmware and all was fine until the actual card had a blown capicator. This was verified by essentially moving the AUX channel card to the front left right slot on the backplane of the unit, this caused the problem to completely go away. Its great to see solid engineering in that ALL 7.1 channels essentially use the same cards, so they can be swapped out - remember that the label on the card FR, C SUB, Rear etc etc are only labels - the actual card slot determines which channels are routed, so tyou can take an aux and swap with the rear etc etc, the only subtle difference is the subwoofer channel which needs to have the crad's toggle switch moved to subwoofer.
Upgrading the firmware involved creating a DOS bootdisk, this can be easily gotten at www.bootdisk.com - then running scom (low level tranfer utility) and upgrading the os first, then powercycling the PDSD and then upgrading the DSP code and powercycling. If you need instructions I can email them to you. You will need a communication cable to RJ11 which you can have made, it must be straight through. The proceed service guy verified with me that these cards are prone to blown capacitors over time due to heat - which makes sense if the Front left right and sub blew first since the guy I bought it from was a heavy 2.1 type of listener.