I didn't like the whole "we have no idea when this will really be available" text in that add or the fact that they don't have a really real product photo yet. For a newish company with a totally new product I want proof it really exists, kthxbye.
I think Ari figured around 3x but I'd have to defer to him. The pot starts ~7 o'clock and with Grados I don't get above 9 even when listening on the louder end of my comfort zone. The other IEM compliance issue is that the PEC pot has the ususal first few degrees of channel imbalance like the RK27. I was definitely able to find a comfortable listening level with good channel balance with the ER4Ps but there wasn't much in the way of adjustment. One of these days I need to see what the output V of my DAC is for comparison purposes.
And the listening report is in. Hum gone, bypass cap cured 99% of the noise floor issues. I tried the amp with my Ety ER4Ps, despite having way too much gain it'd be just fine from a noise standpoint. I've had noisier portable amps.
Back on to the Lite build progress.
Last night I decided that I was going to try and hunt and kill the persistent buzz that the amp had in the left channel. With some help from Colin and Ari we'd narrowed down the list of likely candidates to either the big choke on the top panel or the floating filaments (and perhaps their routing). I had also decided to order up one of Antek's steel transformer covers to try and limit the EMF from the power trafo.
So first up was testing the choke orientation and location. By simply removing the two mounting bolts I was able to move the choke significantly further away from the output transformers and also rotate it freely. Unfortunately this had 0 affect on the noise.
Next up was biasing the heaters above ground which essentially amounted to creating a voltage divider off of B+ and connecting one side of the heater wiring to this. As a part of this operation I also decided to parallel the heater secondaries to better balance the current on the low voltage windings. This will also allow me to run stupid output tubes like the 6336 and 6528. So I created the divider using a ~60k and 27k resistor to create a 50V reference point and tied one leg of the parallel secondaries to this point. Colin has further recommended that I bypass the lower resistor with a 100uf cap which I'll do some time over the next few days. Finally I rerouted the heater wiring after the bias point to run away from the CCS components and as far from the input stage as possible. I also used some of LessEMF's M
While my pedestrian audio budget will never be able to afford any of the Dacses mentioned in that review it is shocking how similar their impressions of the Bryston are compared to what I heard in NYC at the recent meet.
No worries Stretch and thanks for the offer. Part of the appeal of the Stagg was the semi-insane ~$50 price. The cabinet is pretty well stocked right now so I should pass lest I give the missus an excuse to notice.
Both appear to be gone, showing ships in "Discontinued" where before it said 3 to 5 days. Saw this while cooking lunch, should have stopped to grab one of the 640GB drives. Frack.