Eskamobob1

Do we have a schematic for how exactly the HE1 is powered? TBH i've been curious if an after market amp would be able to be made for it for a while.

Found this on alibaba recently and it looks kinda interesting. They seem to have a fair number of internal pics and even an instruction manual (top right of the page) online so I figured I would post it here. I think this is the first energizer I have seen that requires manual bias adjustment when tube rolling/as matenance which is kinda interesting.

Honestly adore this amp. Its assembled in kind of an annoying way that makes accessing stuff basically impossible without fully removing the heatsink sides, but if anyone wants close ups of anything specific I am more than happy to provide.

I dont have the ability to actualy talk about your questions, but having had the chance to dac roll HE1 I can say for certain that HE1 is pretty significantly held back by its electronics. I would put the dac on a similar tier to bricasti M1SE (non-mdx) at best and I think a lot of the fairly poor (compared to other all out systems at least) depth separation is an electronics issue plain and simple. Honesty, I wouldnt be surprised if the aperio had a similar problem.

I also got a chance to spend a fair amount of time with STX in a quiet environment recently. Ive also spent significant time with GC and 3ES Elite (and some very short time with a kerry T2). Honestly, for X9k, its truly a really really good pairing IMO pulling away from the other options Ive heard. That said, its by far the most variable amp I've heard when changing cans. Some things work excelently IMO (X9k, 007mk2, L700, HE60) and other sound outright broken (Corina, shang sr). Its not the same kinds of changes, but id almost compaire it to running a current drive amp (like the KG transconductance and some old bakoon options) where some cans absolutely shine (HD800S, T1.2) and others absolutely fall apart (focals most notably). I had assumed it was the transformers just not playing well with some cans, but if its not OTC I wonder what in the topology is causing this. Its even more confusing since the Z10E never had anything just sound broken on it even if it didnt have the juice needed.

Hello, I dont have a great grasp of these topics so if I have some fairly base misunderstandings or bad assumptions let me know. Now onto the question. My understanding is that estats behave pretty predominantly as a capacitive load. If this is the case it would seem to me that a transconductance amp (that has not be rectified to voltage drive output/aka a 'current drive' amp) would be a fairly ideal way to run estats. Are there any amps that do this? is this how all estat amps do it and I am just not aware? If not, what are the reasons that we dont use an OTA output stage given basically all TOTL estat amps have a solid state output stage (only exception being viva stx afaik)?

The output is transformer coupled? Am I understanding that right? Quite unexpected given I think basicaly every other non stax enegizer is hybrid (z10e is the only exception I can think of tbh)

There is a distinct step in in SQ going from SRD-7 -> wee -> iesl. What would you guys say is the best transformer box on the market (say 5k budget)? Are you simply better off going custom if you want to surpass iesl?

Hey guys. New and utterly uneducated on electrical engineering. Is the mini T2 a shrunk version of the T2 or a new design just based on the t2 topology? I have been drooling over a t2 for ages but have some space tight constraints (mostly footprint) and most of this thread has been over my head so I couldn't figure out the answer