High-Amp Antares amplifier for electrostatic headphones

[Zoide]

Hi,

Has anyone tried the Antares? How does the circuit design and specs look?

http://high-amp.de/html/antares.html

Thanks

[jamesmking]

I have not tried the Antares, but I did build an alpha Centauri... which was my first even stax amp build.

All of the high-amp designs are similar in that they use resistors for the anode load rather than a constant current source and have relatively limited voltage swings. The high voltage power supplies are ok - they don't use a precision voltage reference like the golden reference series but they are better than the supplies found in most(all?) of staxes offerings and they have very good short circuit protection and robustness. The headphones bias is regulated (unlike most/(all?) of staxes offerings) and correctly has a ~5Meg ohm current limit resistor and is the correct 580Voltage too. Overall I would say the designs are competent but certainly not for state of the art. I did find a few errors in the schematic and gerbers for the Centauri but the designer was very helpful and I got the amp working with minimal pcb hacks.

My issue with the centauri and antares is that the 6sn7 does not have a lot of current drive or voltage swing compared to the EL34 which is favoured in Kevnis value designs and coupled with a resistor network instead of a constant current source you lose even more drive so its going to struggle with hard to drive headphones like the sr007a...

looking at Antares its a single value version of the centauri with lower voltages, so less drive than the centauri. Front end looks very similar, if not identical to the Centauri.

I found the centauri to the better than the Stax srm006mk2 - more drive, better bass and dynamics but still nothing close to a blue hawaii, mini T2 or a T2.

looking at the specs its got a fairly wide frequency response with not a lot of low frequency cut off - which is typical for dc coupled amps. Distortion is high for 300V swing - but that's to be expected given the low drive voltages and a single 5sn7 per channel.

So if you want a relatively robust and simple to build starter project the Antares might be an option. If you want a replacement for a srm006 it might be better given the better power supply. If you want high end sound on a budget you are not going to get it from this amp.

 

 

 

Edited May 1, 2022 by jamesmking

[Zoide]

@jamesmkingDo you think that a CCS/ECC99 modded T1S would be better than an Antares or a 353X?

Thanks

 

[jamesmking]

13 minutes ago, Zoide said:

@jamesmkingDo you think that a CCS/ECC99 modded T1S would be better than an Antares or a 353X?

Thanks

 

I am afraid don't have any experience of the T1s, or ecc99. Constant current is going to help the T1S. My guess would be that the high amp psu is better but in the forum people have reported considerable sound quality upgrades moving from resistor load to CC so the T1s with CC would probably be better than the Antares. T1 with CC vs Centauri (centauri is two 6sn7 per channel so more current potential and runs high voltages too) so more difficult to predict a winner. (some of the other forum members like spritzer have massive amounts of experience and would almost certainly be able to provide more solid info than I can from guesswork).

some of the choice is going to be down to what you want the amp for... do you want something pre made and plug and play, or do you want to modify an existing T1s or do you want to have a go at building something fairly simple from scratch, plus it depends on your budget.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 1, 2022 by jamesmking