Cavalli Audio Liquid Lightning

[perrew]

Is this the soon to be released LLMk3....

[spritzer]

I doubt that very much.  Fuck, they could use the 10M90 for the CCS and that Fairchild part for something useable. Never going to happen though. 

[eggil]

Well, Currawong sent me an email stating he deleted certain posts including mine.

I told him I was very concerned headfi would favor Mr Cavallis interest over his customers.

I wonder how much Cavalli pays them on sponsorship fees.

[grawk]

I don't think they're sponsors, much like Ray never was.

[purk]

Well, Currawong sent me an email stating he deleted certain posts including mine.

I told him I was very concerned headfi would favor Mr Cavallis interest over his customers.

I wonder how much Cavalli pays them on sponsorship fees.

 

The post concerning the quality of board & solder?

[PFKMan23]

 

The circuit is completely identical.  Only thing I've done is remove those bloody mosfets which should never have been there and fix the CCS.  So now the output capacitance is cut down to less than 10pf and the huge bump in distortion from the old CCS is gone. 

 

So then it's more like the circuit properly implemented?

[cutestory]

There was a point in time when I considered buying this. That time was pre-HC. Thank the almighty I found this place.

[DefQon]

I found it quite odd that my post (comment on the soldering) was deleted as well.

Guess HF is all about pulling the wool over our eyes.

Who gives a shit if somebody has a grudge against Cavali Audio, if people are paying near $5000 samolians for this amp than it should represent a $5000 amp.

[HeadphoneAddict]

Glad you guys talked me out of this amp a while back, and anything built by Hennyo.  Couldn't be happier than I am with my DIY KGSS and KGBH. 

[eggil]

Yes, Defqon, Shelly's and mine about the poor soldering job are gone.

And all this in the post Mikhail era...

Edited September 25, 2013 by eggil

[kevin gilmore]

I know for a fact that the liquid fire was built every bit this bad, and also not repairable,

and i'm guessing that the liquid gold is also not repairable given the way its assembled.

Another pretty chassis with crap inside.

 

by the way, very few of you will ever see this, so have a good laugh, the cavalli packaging

http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/wca.jpg

Edited September 26, 2013 by kevin gilmore

[n3rdling]

haha I like that

 

I'm gonna start using it to preface all my posts

Edited September 26, 2013 by n3rdling

[roadtonowhere08]

Yes, Defqon, Shelly's and mine about the poor soldering job are gone.

And all this in the post Mikhail era...

 

You act surprised?  That place had (and still has I assume) more behind the scenes horseshit and drama than I could handle.  Way too many thin-skinned, self righteous, and ignorant assholes.

[jwzhan]

 

  _{yeah... it's completely awesome}

Edited September 26, 2013 by jwzhan

[roadtonowhere08]

Me thinks someone is a newegg fan...

 

[DefQon]

haha nice one.

 

Speaking of the Liquid Gold, ain't that Alex's latest creation dubbed the Lau or something - a $6-7k amp or am I just confusing that with Craig's Levi? 

Edited September 26, 2013 by DefQon

[eggil]

I said something nice about the LL  

Nice things won't be censored.

Nice things won't be censored.

Nice things won't be censored.

 

 

EDIT: thats it! I am banning myself from head-fi.

Edited September 26, 2013 by eggil

[guzziguy]

Smart move.

Edited September 26, 2013 by guzziguy

[Hopstretch]

Why is (almost) every post in this thread edited? Perhaps they initially contained too much awesome ...

 

[complin]

They have not deleted mine (gilency).

God, I just can't get over these pics. 

Maybe the poor soldering adds to the liquidity and smoothness of its sound.

 

Yeh a few dry joints make a vast improvement 

[complin]

Well, Currawong sent me an email stating he deleted certain posts including mine.

I told him I was very concerned headfi would favor Mr Cavallis interest over his customers.

I wonder how much Cavalli pays them on sponsorship fees.

 

You have to consider Head-Fi as a any other commercial site now due to the various commercial interests.

It will act to protect those interests and sponsors so free open discussion is no longer possible like here.

There was a similar suppression of problems with some shitt amplifiers a while ago where known problems were deleted and members exposing the situation were banned.

[spritzer]

HF has always favored certain MOT's and more often then not they contribute nothing to the site. 

 

Did anybody catch that small issue with the LAu?  If set to 240V and run at 220V then it can't get out of protection mode.  With ample headroom in the transformer and a regulated PSU this should never happen... 

 

So then it's more like the circuit properly implemented?

 

That's the plan.  Same thing we did for the ESX back in the day. 

 

 

These are the new output resistors using part of the old CCS for mounting. 

 

 

Given that the board will be removed a few times this was needed on the input. 

 

 

This show the new CCS setup and the amount of flux needed to get the sinks to move.  I'll clean it up once the mods are done. 

 

 

Closeup and look, color coded 1000V teflon output wires... 

[spritzer]

Powered it up a few hours ago with zero drama.  The offset and balance were all less than 10V off base so a quick adjustment and were are good. 

 

I'll probably have to go in again and change the current for the BJT's as they weren't designed to run this hot. 

 

As for the sound, well holy shit sticks this is different.  Now we have deep bass, full soundstage and high frequencies.  The amp isn't 100% though and it still has too much of a "character" for my liking.  The bass slams a bit too much and the top end is not as linear as it should be.  Also some slight phase related issues. 

 

Next up, fix this fucking bias supply.  Not only does it make no sense it's also just an accident waiting to happen.  In every Stax amp we have a voltage doubler off the filtered V+ which is then cut down with a divider and further filtered.  So why on earth wasn't the regulated V+ used here?  This cost a bunch more in parts just to do something stupid. 

[spritzer]

I just bypassed the bias supply with one of my adapter cables so now the headphones are fed from a SRM-252S.  Most of the issues above have now disappeared so how fucked is the built in bias supply? 

[skullguise]

Once built, we need to introduce this into meets as a "stock" LL......or maybe use a crayon to put "Version 3" on the back.....