rickcr42
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Rest in peace my good friend.
Posts: 4,514
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Post by rickcr42 on Nov 18, 2006 4:02:28 GMT
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FritzS
Been here a while!
Sound of Blue Danube
Sound of Blue Danube
Posts: 1,364
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Post by FritzS on Dec 9, 2006 17:05:58 GMT
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rickcr42
Fully Modded
Rest in peace my good friend.
Posts: 4,514
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Post by rickcr42 on Dec 9, 2006 18:52:06 GMT
MAN ! the link is definately not directed to anythging relating to the post ! (cue Twilight Zone music ) www.tcaas.btinternet.co.uk/index-1.htmwww.passdiy.com/amps.htmhave built just about all there 1-Zen V1,V2,V3,V4 2-Pass Discrete OA 3-Zen Aleph 3 4-BOZ 5-BALZEN 6-JLH Amp 7-MOSFET JLH amp 8-JLH Full Feature preamp 9-JLH Buffer 10-JLH headphone amp when the smoke cleared all that remained in house is a mongo selectable BAL/Parallel Trafos coupled ZEN amp from the original PCBs I ordered from Audio Express years ago (10 WPC mini furnace solely for winter use on cold nights ) Everything else is either a Pentode,a Triode,single ended MOSFET, a hybrid of the above or a Monolithic Buffer run deep into Class-A operation.Not an opamp or discrete multistage in sight different strokes man
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rickcr42
Fully Modded
Rest in peace my good friend.
Posts: 4,514
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Post by rickcr42 on Dec 9, 2006 22:34:44 GMT
Oops,on the playback side anyway.My recording chain is chock full of monolithc op amps (with discrete output stages ) for both recording and monitoring
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FritzS
Been here a while!
Sound of Blue Danube
Sound of Blue Danube
Posts: 1,364
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Post by FritzS on Dec 10, 2006 10:25:30 GMT
have built just about all there 1-Zen V1,V2,V3,V4 2-Pass Discrete OA 3-Zen Aleph 3 4-BOZ 5-BALZEN 6-JLH Amp 7-MOSFET JLH amp 8-JLH Full Feature preamp 9-JLH Buffer 10-JLH headphone amp Everything else is either a Pentode,a Triode,single ended MOSFET, a hybrid of the above or a Monolithic Buffer run deep into Class-A operation.Not an opamp or discrete multistage in sight different strokes man Rick you are a very hard-working man in hifi :-) But I am lazy - but I build only a new house for my daughter last 7 month so my hobby standstill :-( But the JLH headphone amp is very interesting for me
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rickcr42
Fully Modded
Rest in peace my good friend.
Posts: 4,514
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Post by rickcr42 on Dec 10, 2006 18:47:15 GMT
hardly my definaition of "lazy" I was away from electronics for a long stretch of around 15 years and had forgotten everything so when I decided to jump back in I was a build junkie with something new almost weekly.what this did was force feed the old knowledge lost over a very long time (and that was previously gained over a long period) back into my brian because of all the topology changes in a short amount of time then once i had it handled proceeded to compare/listen/tweak so i could maybe get a handle on why certain changes made real improvement while others not even though better in theory or in the specs area. Around this time I also realised to me it was more important to get the microdynamics and headroom right than it was to try and squeeze the last Nth of distortion spec and so found most of what i liked had a THD spec in the 0.1% neighborhood,was ALWAYS class-A.Was usually single ended even though this meant a cap or transformer directly on the output (and everything I read said this was a no no) and that using all one brand/type of cap and all one brand/type of resistor gave everything a sonic signature that no matter the topology would be the dominant sound of the system so not a good idea. It also came to me that soundstage,depth and "air" around instruments was far more important than anything so called "accurate" because while accurate may sound like a good idea it is in reality impossible to measure and even if you could compared to what ? Every single speaker and every single headphone has its own distinct sound so what is accurate ? It is also notable that the distortion of ANY transducer will be an order of magnetude higher than the worst electronics so my benchmark is to build for "realistic" over "accurate".I want to enjoy MUSIC not listen to electonics so I have no use for micro distortion specs and etched "accurate" sonics unless it also comes with a realistic recreation of the musical event and that means if i close my eyes and the music is of a type that the performers could conceivably fit into my listening room can I "see" them play ? Can I "feel" the presence in my room ? Solid state mostly does not get me there because it collapses to the soundfiled to two dimensions (lateral,hight) while triodes add in the third (depth).I also find SS has a "straining" quality on peak level events and loses some life with the smallest events so has a sweet spot on the volume control where you go loud enough to give some dynamic life back to the sound,easily recognised because it is like flipping on a "loudness" contour,yet not so loud that when the music gets "busy" and is very dynamic i hear certain notes get "shouty",something once heard easy to identify. With pentodes or triodes I find even very very low volume levels still have LIFE and if/when the amps do clip the sonics don't go to teeth gritting or eye wincing but "OK,I guess i better turn it down a bit but i COULD live with this" Different strokes man
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rickcr42
Fully Modded
Rest in peace my good friend.
Posts: 4,514
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Post by rickcr42 on Dec 11, 2006 5:35:59 GMT
By the way Fritz,you may find this interesting,I do : www.cooltune.ch/Projects/Megalith01.htmLooks like a cross between Hiraga's "Le Monstre" and "20W Class-A amp",two amps I always meant to build if only to get a different perspective on Class-A than the JLH and N.Pass amps. At 8 watts not exactly a power house but to be honest plenty for most listening unless your room is huge and the speakers very inefficient.Also,imagine running an entire system (portable player,battery DAC,battery amp ) with zero AC mains line noise ! another "must try" for me but way down on the priorities list at this time when my actual bench time is limited to a couple of hours a week,not even close to enough time to close out my current projets that are strewn all over the house in various stages of completion
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