Massdrop Cavalli Tube Hybrid

[JimL]

1 hour ago, dsavitsk said:

Sometimes flipping toroids will reduce stray fields.

That could certainly be true, but I think that's giving way too much credit to the builder.

[Kung]

On ‎2018‎年‎3‎月‎11‎日 at 2:26 AM, spritzer said:

What's up with those V-caps?  The circuit is fully DC coupled so special insanity?  I do like the cloned chassis though... 

As it turns out I have my fans as well... 

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1.20141002.7.7fbc42fdH73z3A&scm=1007.10009.70205.100200300000001&id=543961961161&pvid=4b6da6a3-603d-4eba-962f-6f36272bacf7

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1.20141002.5.7fbc42fdH73z3A&scm=1007.10009.70205.100200300000001&id=563080882986&pvid=4b6da6a3-603d-4eba-962f-6f36272bacf7

Even fake circuit boards as I never released the mini boards.   Those are completely wrong but since when has that stopped anybody...

Like many tricks in HiFi area，people are willing to believe expensive caps、wires、fuse、rhodium-plated sockets etc. can make sound euphonious，some

companies are to modify their crap stuff with high-priced materials and price the product at the much higher level to make people to think they are sound better.

"tone tuning"，this is the word that I hear those people say most.

I often hear they say :  bhse is tuned for 007 not for 009 ，carbon has too much bass ，gg and megatron are tuned for listening vocals，kgss is more "analytical" than musical...

I've built bh/carbon/gg/mega，to me，they're all great amps in the same class.

[Pars]

“Voiced” is the other term I see used for I assume the same thing. As in “voiced to produce the designer’s signature sound” or some such inane bullshit. If this is a tube amp with coupling caps (and between stages), etc. then there are things you can or could do. A direct coupled SS amp, not so much.


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[luvdunhill]

A direct coupled SS amp, not so much.

I believe this is absolutely possible, through varying distortion harmonic levels. I think for example, dominant third-order harmonics, could be a “voicing” of sorts.

[kevin gilmore]

2nd harmonic and 3rd harmonic vs frequency is what influences sound signature the most.

bipolar vs mosfet outputs makes the most difference.

there is no cavalli house sound. This amp is bipolar outputs, the LCX is mosfet.

[Whitigir]

Wow, taobao is a dangerous place if they use other builder pictures for advertisement on building KG T2.  Who knows what they build it out to be....I hope it won’t bring KG T2 any negatives, or somebody need to pull some strings 

[justin]

I'm curious what happens if you order the Singlepower

[wink]

It only works on one phase.....?

[Pars]

7 hours ago, luvdunhill said:

 

I believe this is absolutely possible, through varying distortion harmonic levels. I think for example, dominant third-order harmonics, could be a “voicing” of sorts.

Yes, you're right, and an oversimplification on my part.

[Hopstretch]

3 hours ago, justin said:

I'm curious what happens if you order the Singlepower

[penmarker]

10 hours ago, Whitigir said:

Wow, taobao is a dangerous place if they use other builder pictures for advertisement on building KG T2.  Who knows what they build it out to be....I hope it won’t bring KG T2 any negatives, or somebody need to pull some strings 

I doubt people will base a proper product with the China fake counterpart. From Taobao especially.

Though I do have a friend who keeps buying Aliexpress opamps and raving how good they sound compared to the stock opamp in his class D amp. Only time I go to Taobao is for their chassis, can easily cost less than half or a third of eBay prices.

[spritzer]

8 hours ago, justin said:

I'm curious what happens if you order the Singlepower

Somebody in China tries to make a clone and fails...

[Thai Tao]

There's one thing i can't understand is that according to massdrop measurement, this amp has really low THD+N : only 0.0025% https://www.head-fi.org/threads/massdrop-x-alex-cavalli-tube-hybrid-amp-cth-dropping-monday.857673/. If it's a simple tube gain stage coupled to solid state buffer like the original  CTH no way it could have such low THD. Even the schiit Vali2 with global feedback has higher distortion than the Massdrop CTH.

[spritzer]

That is the usual Cavalli BS.  No way that the distortion+N is that low.  I could test it but I kinda broke the tube when inserting it into the amp.    I did order some new ones...

[kevin gilmore]

the thd+N is .0075%, and although it does not specify, its likely at 1khz.

look at the schematic posted above.  about 15db of feedback around the grid of the tube. Lowering the input impedance to bipolar levels or lower and kind of negating any possible use of an input tube. Also the plate current source.

spice indicates a second harmonic distortion of -74db at 1khz (.02%) and a 3rd harmonic distortion of -109db (.0003%) at 1khz

however at 10khz the second harmonic is -60db (.1%) and the third harmonic is -96db (.002%)

you can work out the summation on your own.

plus of course the messed up soundstage due to the inverse phase. Something the plankton experts seem to ignore.

In reality, with an old school analog thd meter, the numbers are going to be much much higher.

and of course this is all measured with a 300 ohm resistor. Use a real load especially low impedance, and the numbers go way up.

 

 

 

Edited March 18, 2018 by kevin gilmore

[Thai Tao]

59 minutes ago, kevin gilmore said:

the thd+N is .0075%, and although it does not specify, its likely at 1khz.

look at the schematic posted above.  about 15db of feedback around the grid of the tube. Lowering the input impedance to bipolar levels or lower and kind of negating any possible use of an input tube. Also the plate current source.

spice indicates a second harmonic distortion of -74db at 1khz (.02%) and a 3rd harmonic distortion of -109db (.0003%) at 1khz

however at 10khz the second harmonic is -60db (.1%) and the third harmonic is -96db (.002%)

you can work out the summation on your own.

plus of course the messed up soundstage due to the inverse phase. Something the plankton experts seem to ignore.

In reality, with an old school analog thd meter, the numbers are going to be much much higher.

and of course this is all measured with a 300 ohm resistor. Use a real load especially low impedance, and the numbers go way up.

 

 

 

so spice indicate at least 0.02% thd at 300ohm, real world measurement must be worse, can't understand their spec 0.0014% at 50ohm but at the same time i dont' believe some big company like cavalli do some marketing shit like that. 

[wink]

On 15/03/2018 at 7:42 PM, spritzer said:

Somebody in China tries to make a clone and fails...

Mikhail did the originals....  and failed....

17 hours ago, Thai Tao said:

so spice indicate at least 0.02% thd at 300ohm, real world measurement must be worse, can't understand their spec 0.0014% at 50ohm but at the same time i dont' believe some big company like cavalli do some marketing shit like that. 

It's called Audiophoolery........

[JimL]

23 hours ago, Thai Tao said:

... i dont' believe some big company like cavalli do some marketing shit like that. 

Sorry, but Cavilli wasn't some big company, it was basically one guy, Alex Cavilli, and it's no longer in business.

[SeaWolf]

Regardless, big companies do shit like that all the time btw.

[kevin gilmore]

Even with the grossly inflated prices cavalli eventually went under due to too many hands in the cookie jar and shit quality requiring a lot of repairs, especially the liquid carbon.

when there was only one standard for measuring distortion it was easy. Now that there are a number of adc based distortion devices each with different firmware and software, and digital filters you can generate impossibly low distortion numbers that are meaningless.

jude might want to look at how measurements were done many moons ago and emulate that. Far more useful information.

i think a reasonable number on sales exceed 8M$ over the 8 year life of cavalli. Lots of people are going to take a bath, just like singlepower

Edited March 19, 2018 by kevin gilmore

[jose]

million per year, it's a lot of money for a small business... 

[kevin gilmore]

8M$ total sales based on serial numbers.

[jose]

Disastrous management 

[Kung]

wow，that's a lot of money 

[gepardcv]

Not once you deduct the cost of running a company, building product, and paying taxes. With 8M gross revenue, it probably lost money — must have, or it would likely have stayed in business.