Well, that could well be the behind this, although I’m not aware of any RAAT settings that need to be backed up by battery. Strange, will be interesting to learn if this was the cause or just a coincidence.
Did you ever hear back from dCS on this @Wolfhart_Hauser? Curious…
Yes, upsampler has been repaired, took a while, has to go via the UK distributor. All working fine again, no problem connecting with roon. I have been told that they had to replace the snapchat batterie in the upsampler. It seems it is needed for backup? I never heard about a battery in the upsampler, nothing in the manual or in my web search… Maybe someone knows more why it is needed?
I think you mean this battery:
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Thank you Ermos, yes, I guess this is the battery. So it sits in the DAC and upsampler maybe also in the Vivaldi Clock? It seems they are not lasting forever, I guess next time I change it on my own, the battery costs only around GBP 5 and I am not without the system for over 4 weeks.
Yes, in the Clock. The pic in the above link is showing the Clock board with this battery.
Please be aware that you will violate your dCS guarantee, if you open and ‘repair’ yourself.
I don’t have guarantee anymore. When I had the Scarlatti long time ago and could deal with dcs directly I had an excellent service and woud not think to do little things on my own. On my Vivaldi system I don’t have a warranty anymore and so I have to pay a lot of money for changing a simple battery. So three batteries in the whole system and maybe they have to be changed every 5 years via the distributor, then being sent to dcs and back the same route. What a waste of time and money.
I think the vivaldi system is the best high-end system, it sounds even better then my MSB select, but the service in the UK is only middle class.
Here are the details of the battery and how to handle it:
TIMEKEEPER SNAPHAT (BATTERY & CRYSTAL) (digikey.com)
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Thanks Wolfhart, interesting! I have not looked into the SOICs that this battery supports but since it is present in both the Vivaldi DAC and the Vivaldi Clock which lack network interfaces I am assuming it is protecting storage of some fundamental system configuration information, and not just wake-on-LAN as might have been inferred from your original post.
From the Application Note it looks like storage life is unlikely to be an issue (unless the SOIC it is mounted on is running very hot - unlikely), and capacity consumption in the 5-10 year range looks quite realistic. How old is your unit from new? This is indeed one to watch out for, especially as under normal circumstances this failure will by definition only happen in units out of warranty.
Looking at various pictures of the internals available online the same battery appears to be present in the Rossini DAC but not the Bartók. My own unit is under warranty so I have never opened it.
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It is one of the first Vivaldi systems. I upgraded the upsampler at dcs in 2017, not sure whether they changed the battery then. The DAC is now upgarded to Apex, so should be fine for a while, myabe the clock will be the next one needing a new batery.
Yes, as far as I can tell the battery is on the same board as the analog output stage so presumably swapped out as part of the Apex upgrade. Would be fascinating to understand what it is used for and what conditions cause the capacity to be consumed. I wonder if there is any reason to expect different service lifespans from batteries in units working under identical conditions (of power supply/irregularities/failures etc)?
I agree struts. I would also like to know what the batteries in the vivaldi system are for. Sometimes it is called backup-battery. What for? I had for longer times the system switched off, so should one leave it better on stand-bye to reduce the need for back-up battery power? I had never thought that this type of hardware systems had a battery whch had to be changed after certain times. dcs also does not mention anything in their documentation.
The APEX board is the same on Rossini and Vivaldi. On my Rossini it does not contain this battery, hence it also does not on the Vivaldi APEX board.
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Ah, thanks! I interpreted the board layout wrongly (was squinting at a low res pic). What I thought were op amps must have been something else. Makes sense that the output stage sits on the same daughter board as the DAC. I am guessing the battery sits in the control circuit (presumably on the motherboard) and backs up some basic system settings.
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I have started a topic on the dCS community with our questions:
Excellent 
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I found that this type of battery is usually combined with an oscillator (used as timekeeper) from STmicroelectronics, see below. That could mean the battery power is needed if the upsampler is fully switched off and not on standby.
In my case I had longer time periods where I did not use the upsampler and that might have dragged the battery down. When the battery is down, the clock might get out of sync and roon cannot synchronise with roon anymore. But this is only a speculation. Woulod be good to hear an expert opinion on this.Interestingly the battery is also available (same size) with higher capacity of 120mAh, so it would be better if dcs goes for the larger battery and the Vivaldi upsampler is not running into problems after some years. A lot of work to check out all tthe potential network issues and finally finding a default battery which is nowhere mentioned in the whole documentation. and takes a few minutes to change.
The M4Txx-BR12SH SNAPHAT®top is a detachable lithium power source for ST’s serial real-time clock and non-volatile TIMEKEEPER®surface-mount SOIC package (28- and 44-pin).
The SNAPHAT top contains both the battery and crystal and is designed to be “snapped on” after the SOIC is surface mounted on the PC board. Thus the two-piece solution prevents the battery and crystal from being exposed to the high temperatures of the surface-mount process.
Provides battery backup power for serial real-time clock, non-volatile TIMEKEEPER®and supervisor devices in the 28- or 44-pin SNAPHAT®SOIC package
- Removable battery avoids heat associated with surface-mount process
- Snaps directly onto surface-mounted SNAPHAT SOIC
- Choice of battery capacities
- M4T28-BR12SH = 48 mAh
- M4T32-BR12SH = 120 mAh
- Keyed insertion to ensure proper assembly
- Removable for replacement and proper disposal
The energy needed to sustain the clock operations can be supplied by a small lithium button supply when a power failure occurs.
Thanks for the extra info.
Just for the record, the Vivaldi uses the M4T28:
All details about it can be found here:
Thanks Ermos, I adapted my last post corresponidngly to M4T28. It has 48mAh. Should be easy to upgrade to the M4T32 with 120mAh and avoiding the hustle to change it after a few years.
All our questions have been fulfilled!