Therefore, we are offering these readers (called "ASR-40") which feature not only 660 nM red LEDs, but with geniune reverse scan and a nifty little low noise power supply. Pricing will depend upon your supplier, but in general they are a full 30% below our standard readers. This means that these kits are only slightly more than the cheaper solution, but you get so much more for your money.

Small quantities will be available later in August. Should you want to know, all of our existing readers, analog and/or digital will still be available.

For those of you going to ShowEast, please come by booth 1500/1501 and you can fondle them.

What else would you like to know?

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Bill Purdy
Component Engineering

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To Kevin, while we have managed to keep what we consider to be the factors important for a quality component, we have been able to save a lot of money in several areas. The power supply is an example. It is not a plug-in system which means no extra mounting package (but all of the connectors on the new one are unpluggable). Because we abandoned the requirement that it fit into a 1U rack space we could use off-the-shelf trasformers instead of the expensive custom one in the standard unit. While the pre-amp circuitry in the reader head is the same (actually, slightly better), it is much less expensive to buld. There is only one layer of circuit board instead of two. There is no internal lateral adjustment. Because of the quality of the lenses mentioned above, we no longer have to set the exact magnification of each unit as is done on the standard model. We have studied this enough to know that the lens tolerances are good enough that we can press all the parts together and after a quick check it is ready to ship. This saves a lot of expensive labor. On the other hand, we kept all of the sturdy machined housings. We kept the plug-in connections for ease of servicing. We kept the solid copper LED mounts for the best heat transfer. These mounts are also fully adjustable so that you can maximize the optical alignment. These two factors alone can mean greatly increased LED life. Speaking of increasing LED life, the power supply has in it a thumpless On/Off circuit so that you can turn them off between shows. That's the sort of stuff.

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BTW does anyone have any Gaumont Kalee proj pix? never seen an operational one

Josh

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What happens is that the red LED illuminates the sound track and the lens images the track onto the face of the cell. It is literally projected onto the cell. Because the image is magnified (about 3.6 times) the effective slit width is very small. Because the masking takes place on the surface of the cell there is essentially no cross talk and this in turn is why the stereo decoding is so perfect.

Because the LEDs are nowhere near as bright as an exciter lamp, a pre-amp is required and that is what is built into the box at the end of the lens tube. Its output emulates the signal that would be coming from one of the original open cells. This is why the new readers should interface with all of the other processors. This pre-amp requires bi-polar DC current which is generated by the power supply which also, of course, supplies the current to the LED. In the case of our power supplies, the output to the LED is current regulated and the no-load voltage is clamped to a safe level should the LED be connected backwards (the LEDs from Dolby may come with either polarity).

I am sorry that the pictures may have given the impression that there is no sound drum....there most certainly must be. The pictures were taken to show only the parts of the kit. If you go to our website, "www.componentengineering.com" under Sound Reader you will see several pix with all the parts (including digital) in place. There is even a picture of at least the sound head portion of a Kalee.

To Scott, the installation in a 1040 is slightly painful. The lens tube on the front of the pre-amp box is too long for it to be inserted into the slit lens clamp. The rear wall of the sound head is too close. Therefore, you have to remove that whole subassembly, stick the lens and its adapter sleeve in place and then put the assembly back in. Even then, when you try to focus it, the pre-amp box may want to be in the space occupied by that piece of cast iron in the upper left hand corner which is a light baffle over the ventilator slot. If you don't mind butchering the whole back end of the sound head you could just cut it away and both problems would be answered.

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