Can it be done for a hobby system? I have a bit of electrical/electronics engineering knowledge which made me start wanting to tinker with it. My first thought was to put a filtered power supply in place of the transformer for whatever voltage the transformer is supposed to put out, that way the AC wave is already done with and we don’t have any of the FWR nonsense. I might be crazy, but does this sound like a feasible thing to do?
I PM’d Destin (thesdx) a while back about doing something similar to my MS-4. From what I can remember, he said that he knew of a few people who fried their panels trying to do this.
The PM isn’t in my inbox anymore, so unfortunately I cannot reference it. If he’s still around maybe he can weigh in on this.
I have a MS-9200UD and I would not want to fry that guy. I’ve seen MS-2’s pop up on Ebay for $30 so if I get a little more info I might try to convert the MS-2.
I always like to say “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. That being said, I wouldn’t try doing anything to a good panel. FWR can be a pain in the neck sometimes due to the “noise” it makes and its incompatibility with some devices, but you risk destroying your panel. Even with a bit of knowledge, fixing something with SMD components can be near impossible without the right equipment.
You might try adding a capacitor between the + of your NAC and the + connection of the device you want to receive filtered DC. As long as your A/V signal is polarized (and only AC signals are not), you cannot reverse-charge it during supervision, and since it would only supply the 1 A/V signal you don’t have to worry about working it on to the panel somewhere/somehow. Unfortunately, the MS-2/MS-4 has an on-board rectifier which is designed to take the signal from the transformer and turn it into FWR. If you had a schematic you could replace the filtering capacitor with one that has a larger capacity and get a much smoother signal, but again, you risk damaging the board.
Also note that any of my solutions proposed would void any warranty, fire code, NFPA guideline, UL listing, etc, etc, that may have applied to the system so don’t do it in a professional install.