Cavalli Audio Liquid Carbon

[DefQon]

52 minutes ago, penmarker said:

He can't, because they've already established relations with HF. HF hates SBAF to the core. You can't even link to SBAF in HF threads. I did it once and I got a pm by a mod saying I can't do some things. Imagine hating another forum which has I think less than a quarter for your traffic, and then seeing your good friend go there to market his products. HF is gonna do a temper tantrum.

They salty as fuck.

Nah it's not really about hate and the whole censorship with prevention of linking to other headphone related audio sites and prohibited to do so on HF has been around for many many years, if you make links to this site, changstar and sbaf (both sites owned by purrin aka Marv) you'd get a warning. Apart from maybe a small handful of people HF whose opinions, ideas and experiences I respect, everybody on here and sbaf know that the majority of popular posters (esp ones that start hype trains) on HF are clueless fucking morons and that is the way Jude and Co. likes the site's audience to be comprised of. 

28 minutes ago, mypasswordis said:

Sucks that dshill84 and shillchu were once part of the OG ortho crew along with wualta, bjarne, jadeeast, ericj, Faust, me, etc. I feel mildly guilty by association. Shillchu was already flipping orthos back then, come to think of it. 

Funny thing is NoNoNoNoNoNo used to trash ortho classifieds because people were selling them at high prices, this was circa. 2012-13 or so. There's probably a good reason why those ortho crew guys are rarely on HF at all.

Edited October 17, 2017 by DefQon

[purk]

What...how about the Liquid Spark and Tungsten?!?!  

[Dave R]

Normally I would feel sorry for anyone having any kind of mishap with their audio gear, but there's been plenty of warnings about Cavalli, but not only has these warnings been ignored by some, they've also been ridiculed at that other site.

[swt61]

19 hours ago, kevin gilmore said:

actually this probably exceeds the singlepower level of failure. Not in the same way, Mikhail walked away with piles of peoples money, but at least for the liquid carbons, one simple mistake with the volume up and plugging in a SE headphone, and the thing blows up. And sometimes it blows up so bad as to burn thru the board, and is now unrepairable. For people outside the usa, by the time you send it in, get it repaired and get it sent back, only for it to blow up again, might as well just throw it in the trashcan. Liquid Fires, now completely unrepairable, i'm sure that Liquid Lightning units are also unrepairable...

The SBAF comment is classic. And SO fucked.

just remember the first 25 or so people paid over $6k for the liquid gold...

Liquid Glass, yep a classic, depending on what tubes you stuffed in there, up to 3 or 4 db of channel imbalance, and no balance control.

And this quote from dBel84 is absolutely amazingly delusional

" He has struggled to keep CA afloat through numerous challenges and was always willing to sacrifice himself in an effort to do what he believed was the right thing to do. This was not an easy decision for him and I can only support him for doing so"

 

Kevin, I'm guessing that being a "thought leader" just took up too much of his time  Maybe the Liquid Lunch will be his next venture.

[kevin gilmore]

I do like dbel84's comment that the cavalli amps will be worth more now that production has ceased. Anyone know any RSA or singlepower amps that are worth more now than when they were new?

the liquid spark as far as I can tell is just another version of the ehha amp. with a switching power supply.

the liquid tungsten is a poorly done futterman with proprietary tubes and again a switching power supply.

Being a thought leader definitely took up a lot of his time.

[spritzer]

Worth more than what, the raw materials in them?  Broken amps aren't usually worth a whole lot...

[Pars]

Door stops can be expensive...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[spritzer]

Yup...(with the Single Power ES-2 half built in the corner of the room)... they sure can be.   

[wink]

But, but, I thought Cavalli was a horse of a different colour....

 

[JimL]

On 10/17/2017 at 6:14 AM, kevin gilmore said:

I do like dbel84's comment that the cavalli amps will be worth more now that production has ceased. Anyone know any RSA or singlepower amps that are worth more now than when they were new?

RSA is out of business?  Just looked up their website, and there is a list of Christmas specials dated 10/17/17.

[kevin gilmore]

Looks like significant price reductions on what is probably NOS. Nothing new from ray in a few years.

also I really like this one, complete lie from day one. The amp is not differential. Its 4 x single ended amps same as liquid carbon. no common mode rejection... and one of the worst phase splitters ever

[penmarker]

Sorry if this is off topic, but what are balanced differential amps? I think I understood it when it comes to balanced studio monitors where one of the the balanced inputs gets inverted so common mode rejection will reduce noise.

Headphones however usually has +ve and -ve pumping push-pull straight to the drivers. How would a differential amp work? 

Or maybe mention some balanced differential headphone amps and I guess I can go from there.

[kevin gilmore]

a true balanced differential amplifier will have significant common mode rejection. For example there are a few well known diy dacs that have a bit of dc on their output. a differential amplifier will subtract the dc from the inputs and the output will be free of dc with respect to ground. a balanced amplifier made from 4 x unbalanced input amplifiers will have significant dc on the output.

For headphones wired as balanced, no problem. For headphones wired as single ended, could be a big problem.

supersymmetry dynalo and dynahi are true balanced differential amplifiers. So is the RSA darkstar (although it still sounds like shit)

schiit joutenheim is a balanced differential amplifier (actually its an instrumentation amplifier) but has significant differential gain when used with a single ended input.

liquid gold, liquid carbon, gsx are not balanced differential amplifiers. The first two have phase splitters to fix the problem. the gsx is balanced out only when you have a balanced input signal.

[purk]

But the GS-X MKII is a true balanced differential amplifier, correct?

[johnwmclean]

Yes that is correct.

[kevin gilmore]

no that is not correct. Its 4 single ended amplifier channels. No input dc rejection.

Its a balanced amplifier, but not differential. its wired different than the liquid gold in that a single ended input results in a single ended output.

[johnwmclean]

I stand corrected, my assumption came from the topology discussion here:

https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/lightning-quick-headamp-gs-x-mk2-headphone-amplifier

 

[mwl168]

2 hours ago, kevin gilmore said:

no that is not correct. Its 4 single ended amplifier channels. No input dc rejection.

Its a balanced amplifier, but not differential. its wired different than the liquid gold in that a single ended input results in a single ended output.

Is this because how Justin chose to implement it with 4 separate front end on GS-X MKII? Looking at the original Dynalo schematic, one single 2SJ109/2SK389 JFET front end is capable of differential and balanced input and output to the next stage? 

Edited October 24, 2017 by mwl168

[kevin gilmore]

you either add a unbalanced/balanced to balanced input stage which adds lots of parts and space, or supersymmetry which forces a low input impedance.

so let me explain further, lets say you have an amp with a gain of 5

now you put 1v on both the + and - xlr inputs.  Output voltages are +5 for both. Difference is zero, but if you have unbalanced headphones, then 5v on the headphones which is bad

now you do the same thing to a true differential amplifier. Output voltage is now 0 for both channels

which is why a true balanced amp removes any common mode voltages and noise

this does not help you with a single ended input. or a single ended input converted to balanced. In the first case there is 5v on the SE output. In the second case the + output has +5v and the - output has -5v

 

Edited October 24, 2017 by kevin gilmore

[jgazal]

This was a long time ago, but perhaps it is useful to recollect:

On 13/09/2010 at 8:52 PM, kevin gilmore said:

Not exactly.

 

Fully complementary: a transistor in the top half of a circuit is matched by a transistor of opposite polarity on the bottom half of the circuit.

Slew rates are identical or close to identical in every section of the amplifier.

 

Fully differential: input signals with common mode noise with respect to ground are ignored.

Special care for electrostatic amps, for which the outputs both go up and down with respect to ground for

common mode noise, but the bias would therefore change for signicant amounts of dc at both inputs.

 

Symmetry: Everything is active in both directions. The result of fully complementary.

 

Tubes can be fully differential, lots of circuits exist. Tubes can never be complementary as there is no such

thing as a p-channel tube. The output circuit of a circlotron can be considered as fully symmetric, but the

drive circuit is anything but.

 

Dynalo, dynahi,dynafet,b22 and B24 are all fully complementary, fully differential and fully symmetric.

Lots of power amps over the years are the same. Very very few dynamic headphone amps do this.

Mainly due to cost issues.

 

The electrostatic circuit above is all of the right things. But the required super-symmetry

causes the input impedance to be way low. Plus a huge amount of parts, lots and lots of heatsinks

and board area.

 

kgss, kgsshv, kgbh, T2 and every other stax amp are balanced and have differential inputs, but

are not symmetric and definitely not complementary either. One of the results is that power supply

noise and drift are now a significant issue.

Edited October 24, 2017 by jgazal

[A_Zero]

Can someone post a link to the  liquid gold mini board? Tried some keyword searching but just couldn't find it. Cavalli really sold a LOT of these amps to China, but seldom are they mentioned this year. Perhaps all blown up lol.

[jp11801]

here is your link 

 

here is the link

[kevin gilmore]

lg.zip

note: phase splitter not included

you need 4 for balanced

Edited October 27, 2017 by kevin gilmore

[A_Zero]

Thank you very much Mr. Gilmore

[Thai Tao]

On 27/10/2017 at 7:13 PM, kevin gilmore said:

lg.zip

note: phase splitter not included

you need 4 for balanced

So you said the LG is just a bigger LC, and now we can have a Massdrop LG for only 299$