Did HeadRoom discontinue the Desktop Ultra DAC?

[Tyll Hertsens]

I definitely wish you all the best in whatever you end up doing if you read this, Tyll.

And if I don't read it?

Thanks mang.

[Eric5676]

And if I don't read it?

I'd have been sad.

Thanks mang.

[spritzer]

Talking factually, how are RSA products unreliable, badly designed, unsafe for the end user, and have a iffy warranty?

Ray and I haven't talked for months, so I am not asking these questions as any kind of friend of his. I've owned multiple products of his over the years, as well as many manufacturers and have not ran into any issues. Not liking someone is one thing, but making these statements is showing things other than dislike.

Many of the B52's have issues, if Ray had sold more than two A-10's and to people who aren't clueless idiots then he'd have a massive problem and lets not forget all the cRaptor issues and the Stealth preamps. Running a low voltage regulator at high voltages will just end this way.

As for being badly designed, where should I start? The A-10 is just bad over all. It drives the tubes to horrifically past their limits that they will fail and could do nasty damage to the headphones as there is nothing to protect against that. The SR-Omega for instance has the metal chassis connected to the +/- outputs off the amp so a short is possible given enough voltage. The single filament supply is also grounded into the signal ground so if something were to happen it could end very badly for the other components connected to it. Then there is the whole issue of trying to use SRPP with electrostatic drivers without trying to compensate for the major issue of SRPP. What you end up with is a 6500$ amp that is worse in every way to the Koss E/90 which you get "free" with the ESP950 system. Then we have the preamp section which has a very high output impedance which is my book isn't a very good way of doing things...

As for warranty, take for instance a B52 which was less than 5 years old but Ray suddenly decided it was out of warranty and wanted 500$ to fix a 20$ part. This was in no way due to misuse or anything like that, it was Ray just not honoring his own fuckups.

[immtbiker]

Oh My!

[Knuckledragger]

RSA makes Birgir go

[immtbiker]

Like the Vikings in a Capital One commercial, or the Gorilla in the Samsonite commercials?

I just want to know what I'm dealing with here. After all, I was in his room drinking Duggeh's 40 proof beer, and don't want to be woken up, chained to the hotel wall with weapons of small destruction being hurled in my general direction

[spritzer]

The one hopped up on berserker mushrooms and wielding a huge axe...

It just really rubs me the wrong way when people, either knowingly or by sheer incompetence, sell gear which is basically broken or so badly designed that it will never better a much cheaper unit. Add to this high prices, some magic and fairy dust BS with very questionable engineering and I just get mad. This isn't just RSA though, Slee and Rudistor also pull the same crap. With the A-10 I do think Ray knows he's selling badly made crap as I had to force his hand to post internal pics and those were terrible quality. No pics of the inside on his site either. We do know what's in there though and it is much worse then even those tube PSU Single Power ES amps.

[Knuckledragger]

With the A-10 I do think Ray knows he's selling badly made crap as I had to force his hand to post internal pics and those were terrible quality. No pics of the inside on his site either. We do know what's in there though and it is much worse then even those tube PSU Single Power ES amps.

This kind of boggles the mind. When it came to making actively dangerous audio gear, Mikhail was not merely an overachiever, he was an artist. His big amps were unique and beautiful clusterfucks. To the untrained eye, RSA products seem pedestrian in their shortcomings. I know some previous RSA PSUs left scorch marks behind after being on too long. Also, ISTR Kevin said that the power output on the A10 PSU used male pins instead of a female socket and thus exposed the user to to dangerous voltages. This was on a prototype, and I don't know if that got fixed that in the production model. Ray tap dances on the edge of Hanlon's razor.

[spritzer]

Woo is guilty of the utter stupidity of using male pins on the PSU connectors as well. I was concerned enough about this that I dropped Jack and email early this year but he just gave me some BS about these being the only connectors they had access to. I use the same dirt cheap Y2M connectors and they are available as matched pairs in both configurations.

Ray's real "genius" is building PSU's which eat up more power than the amp they supply and how he's cheap enough/doesn't understand tubes enough, to seriously compromise the safety of the end user. The A-10 uses a 4 pin connector for the umbilical, +300V, +600V, GND and a single wire for the filaments. This means the common ground in the amp chassis is the return for the switching DC filament supply. Now for a normal tube amp which has relatively low voltage sitting on the cathodes you can get away with using a single filament supply or if the tubes in question have a high cathode-filament voltage limit. Electrostatic amps do not qualify here, at least not the output stage. Take the ES-1 for instance, the Stax schematic clearly states the filaments for the first two stages should be grounded but the last stage should be on it's own transformer winding and left floating. Mikhail naturally didn't do that (I do think he was working off a schematic where the filaments aren't drawn but he should have known better) so all the tube issues the owners complained about came from this.

Now with the A-10 this is an even bigger issue since we are dealing with small signal tubes (5687's) configured in SRPP and pushed way past their limit. With SRPP you have one tube stacked on top of the other in a bid to get a cheap push-pull circuit but most aren't used like that. In truth the A-10 should have 6 filament supplies and 8 single triodes just for the output stage. The driver stage and the "preamp" could be fed from a single, grounded supply and the first stage of the SRPP circuit could be fed of a common, floating supply. The output tubes would have to be isolated and left floating individually which isn't really an issue but requires a lot of wiring.

Now what happens when the tubes are driven past their limits like this is hard to predict but the thought of high voltage DC spilling into the signal ground terrifies me no end.

[immtbiker]

On these lines, I believe that Kerry (who is extremely and overly cautious), when building his version of the Blue Hawaii, which I named "BHKE", or "Blue Hawaii Kerry Edition", made some wise choices.

First of all, he ran the AC and DC from the P/S to the amp, in 2 separate umbilicals. Secondly, he created a small circuit, so that if the umbilical is not plugged into the amp, the voltage is shut down via relay as not to enable a situation for the possibility for any kind of shock.

Small amount of time spent (although tossing and turning might have been involved while brainstorming the situation before going to sleep), which resulted in a nice yield that might never be necessary, but if it is one day, it will save some cavity tasting.

[swt61]

Let's not associate Kerry with Ray in any manner. They should not be discussed in the same thread IMO. Kerry is a very knowledgeable builder, with the ability to build a safe and functional amp. And in my own personal opinion, a better looking amp as well. Ray just tacks on slabs of aluminum and pretty notions to try to make his amps look expensive.

[spritzer]

Yeah, Kerry and Ray don't belong on the same forum, let alone the same thread. Kerry's amp is better than 99% of the manufacturers out there and his attention to detail is just astounding. I played a small part in the design of that amp and I do have a set of boards here waiting on a chassis (like so many of my projects). It will be fun to compare it to Justin's amp, especially with the new KGSSHV PSU unit...

Speaking of the two umbilical cables, there is actually a funny story about that which I hope Kerry doesn't mind me sharing. He got zapped by the amp so he decided to design a circuit which would flash a fault sign and disengage the PSU if the umbilical cables aren't hooked up. He then sent me the circuit for me to look over and I liked the idea but was a bit puzzled why it was needed. I asked him why he didn't just have the female chassis plug on the PSU and the male plug on the amp so he could never touch exposed pins (he had it the other way around). With such small caps in the amp chassis there is no way to come into contact with the full fury of the PSU. Two solutions to the same problem...