Harman Kardon Isub 2000 Windows Driver

Discuss: Possible fix for Harman Kardon iSub problems with PowerPC Macs Sign in to comment. Be respectful, keep it civil and stay on topic. We delete comments that violate our policy, which we. Harman Kardon iSub 2000 Subwofer. We have closed this report as resolved. Post them below or e-mail us! It will ask you to install, and click install. Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing. To my dismay, I received the following email from Apple. Add to Wish Isub 2000.

This hack/mod may be a bit scant on some details and is meant for dedicated hack/makers with a bit of skill under their belt. No details are given for the physical dismantling of the iSub but, screws are under the feet (carefully remove feet) and just follow your nose after that. Use lots of padding – you don’t want to put scratches all over it as you work. All the following is used at your peril or elation 😉 I picked this up from Ebay as a purposeful hack project. Apple no longer supports the iSub, although on my Windows laptop it does appear as an audio device and I can play sound through it. The iSub by Harmen Kardon was designed for Apple as a USB only subwoofer. It is a fairly iconic looking subwoofer, which has since been replaced with the HK Soundsticks range, using the same looking subwoofer but with two small stereo speaker stacks, all running via standard audio (USB has gone). The electronics in the iSub consists of two parts, one is the USB to audio section and the other is a plain and simple subwoofer amplifier.

The iSub is well constructed, with audio seals everywhere, even on the power socket. The USB had to go and to maintain the air seal integrity, the USB cable would be re-purposed as the audio cable, re-wired for audio in via a 3.5mm stereo plug. As far as reverse engineering went, I did not go as far as to re-create the full circuit diagram. It appears that the circuit board is multi-layered, so recreating the circuit would be a nightmare! I have found that the electronics in the iSub consists of two parts, one is the USB to audio section (UDA1321, USB to Audio IC + 8582C 2kbit – 256x8bit i2c EEPROM to store the audio settings for the 1321 chip) and the other is a plain and simple amplifier (TDA7256, 30W Amp IC). Here’s the PCB. So what I have done Soldered a short across the C-E of Q01 – this stops the iSub from being constantly muted, Q01 is actively driven by the USB audio chip, which I disabled by removing the little 3.3V regulator (top right in the picture above).

Then the audio trace from the USB audio circuitry was cut. The direct audio feed will be soldered to the cut track on the left. Now, using the USB cable to feed the audio. As mentioned, this keeps the air-tight integrity of the iSub and saves drilling holes, etc to feed another cable. The cable diameter is a little large, but I was able to force fit a metal (for strength) 3.5mm stereo jack to the end, in place of the USB connector.

The earth/ground is connected to the shield an I chose two random conductors for the L&R audio signals. For a Sub, though, you can just get away with using the Tip conductor of the plug, generally the very low frequency signals in stereo are pretty much the same. On the PCB, I removed the small inductor array (L01) then fitted two 10k-ohm resistors to combine the L&R signals into one and then wired it to the left of the cut track. It was then a case of a quick bench test, then re-assembling the iSub.

Final observations: The whole mod works well as an audio amplifier. BUT, I thought that the power amp circuitry may have had some Subwoofer filtering (given the number of electrolytic capacitors around the audio path), it appears not. The subwoofer profiling may have been done on the USB audio chip, or in the Mac OS when it was able to drive the iSub, so after the mod the iSub needs to be driven by a dedicated Subwoofer output from a audio processor or a sound card.

Safety tip: A good supply of ice helps with soldering iron burns. This entry was posted in, and tagged,,. Bookmark the.

A very nice job of analyzing the analog/power side of the circuit board, and of describing and illustrating a useful mod. Hi, I stumbled onto this page while searching for mods to my 2.1 soundsticks/sub. I’m a little confused as to which version I have, as my isub is USB only, but has 2 RCA outputs that hook up the the 2 soundsticks. My sub does NOT have an audio in, only USB. I guess my question is if I do this mod, will it effect the audio that is being sent to the output for the sound sticks?? I’m thinking the crossover has to be post the USB to audio converter, only because I doubt the DA has 3 or 4 outputs, if you follow me.

Thanks for any insight. I had given up hope when I searched for such a hack years ago. Sitting in my garage waiting.

I gotta say, ROCK ON took me a couple tries (ok 6-7) to get the wire to solder itself to the cut trace wire and I had to buy resistors for the first time in decades, but hey it works! Sorry for any astonishment, but I haven’t done anything like this in years (with any success). I’ve used a Y splitter to connect my existing speakers & the iSub and it all worked fine. Had to increase the sound output to compensate for the splitting.