philodox

Oh, and on a more positive note... the new 'ultra micro DAC' sounds like fun. I wonder how a standalone Headroom Max DAC module sounds?

I love how everyone is saying that the Zanden is the best amp in the K1000 room... when it has an Audio Aero Capitole as its source, and the rest are driven from Squeezeboxes. WTF. PS. Completely off topic, but we got those parts Kevin. Surgery will commence once I get my new faceplate from Steve.

As I said at head-fi... I just don't get it.

Awesome, thanks for mirroring it. I am thinking about giving the live upgrade a try first...

I would count the Eastsound CD-E5 as an exception as well. Sure, I've replaced the transport on mine now... but that is after 6 months of near constant use, and my old unit never crapped out. Got a transport for free off of Art and it is putting out beautifull music again. I've got the zapfilter in there now as well, but unless you need really nice balanced outputs it is not really necissary. The stock single ended output stage is quite nice. Also, I reserve my judgement on the Darkvoice. A lot of people who I trust have said good things about it, and the broken one from the meet aerius and I attended had a faulty power switch. Personally, I don't think that means the amp is poorly designed... it means it had a faulty power switch.

I prefer steppers as I get used to listening at a certain step and can get everything setup perfect for each type of music. I find that 24 steps gives me enough range, but I can see how that would be a problem for some. When I move to the amp on my computer rig I find myself missing the clicks. I am kind of getting sick of having two steppers though... so I might have ordered one of those sexy 4 channel singlepower stepped attenuators to put in my amp.

Coffee hurts when it comes out your nose.

Based on my experiences with Peter McAlister, I think it would be a walk in the park.

I would just send the Dragon back and get Mikhail to throw on more inputs and a remote. I am pretty sure I have seen him do a remote volume control before.

Why cant you use the Dragon?

dammit... times like this make me wish I had an SACD player.

Yeah, I am sort of undecided on that yet. There are a few other things going on that I want to wait on before I hand his ass to him on the internet. Anyways, I am loving the sound of it right now witht he RCA 6GU7's and the zapfilter output on my cd player. If I just listen to the music and forget about that mess in there I am pretty happy.

hehe, well... I hope I can improve on it somewhat when I do the rebuild. It was sort of up in the air before, but I am almost 100% on completely rebuilding it now. Once I get the circuit from you I will start things going with my welder friend on the case work.

Those being? I heard the SDS-XLR at the national and it sounded pretty damn good, but the tubes were tweaked for Mikhails R10's and there were better choices for my K340's. I think the fact that I have gotten to the same level for less than a tenth of the cost is pretty impressive. I'm not happy with the build quality of my amp either, but I do like the sound of it and I don't want to go through the headache of sending it back to Peter again.

Interesting... output impedance is obviously not everything though as I much prefer this amp to my old dynahi.

Cool, what about 400ohms and 32ohms? Those are going to be the two I will be mainly using... moreso the 400ohms of course. I took some pics last night when Renato came over and will send them your way in a bit.

I'm surprised Larry didn't recable them... Still, that wood looks hott!

Oh, I see... well, I will say again: "this is all in my words and taken from memory and sketchy notes"

How can you be so sure when you haven't seen this part of the circuit yet? - Edit: Sorry, just noticed your bracketed comment. Please explain...

Ok, so here is what Peter said about the design to the best of my memory. Also keep in mind that he is forced to dumb down things quite a bit for me to follow. - 6BZ7/6BQ7A are on the input in paralled and are setup in a 'proprietary circuit' that provides ~6db of gain and has the primary purpose of presenting 100ohms impedance to the rest of the circuit, regardless of the impedance of the source. Three seemingly contradictory statements, but perhaps not: - 6CG7/6GU7 are in parallel and work in conjunction with the 27GB5/PL500 for the output. - The 27GB5 are in a way setup to be the CCS for the 6CG7. - If you want to say one tube is on the output, it is the 27GB5. Again, this is all in my words and taken from memory and sketchy notes. Someone was asking me the output power of the amp recently... can't remember who. Anyways, he said that if you were to give it a wattage rating, it would be 6 watts. He also said that is not the best way to rate the power of a headphone amp since it tells you hardly anything about its ability to drive various headphones. He said a better way to put it is 98volts peak to peak. When I asked him about current, he said that it could put out 600mA at 100volts easily enough. I asked him about output impedance again and he gave me the same answer, 40ohms. Hope that helps. We will know soon enough once I get Kevin to look at some pictures. EDIT: He also said that the 27GB5s are in triode mode.

You are probably right, but that IS a guess... right now anyways. "or a complete abortion like that wood thing that jason built" - Huh? Are you talking about the power supply for my prototype POS amp? The amp was actually on a scrap piece of plexi, get it right! EDIT: Go to the 'Hell hath frozen over' thread for info on what Peter told me.

That is a lot to digest... and I really should be working right now. I will be back later to respond in full. I also have some info from Peter regarding the design that I will share to the best of my ability.

hehe... Kevin Gilmore is my hero.

Exactly! Cry me a fucking river.

Cool... glad to hear it as the charlize I am building for my Polk Audio RTi4's [97db] is very similar.