4 days
I received two different orders in 4 days. $45.00 is expensive shipping for the 2 power supplies I bought though because they use UPS express as the cheapest option. I get things from other places like Hong Kong for $5.00 and that takes 10 days.
our little forum, T-Class focused but rapidly growing on diy-side
unfortunnatelly for you, it's in italian (but many of us can write in english, if you've to ask something)
main page Forum gratis : T-Forum :: T-Class, HiFi revolution
SureTK related threads :
- nuova scheda sure (first introductive thread )
- Sure electronics TK2050 le MODIFICHE (more tweaking & diy focused)
and much other things..enjoy !
lots of amp-pr0n, I love it.
and another zalman
Sure electronics TK2050 le MODIFICHE - Pagina 30
I see quite a few attempts to mod the output stage, apparently mostly Arjen's coils, though.
There's also talk of sonic improvements with removing the gain switches. Might try that next...
I have two Power supply choices. 24v 5A or 32v 2.2A. Any thoughts on which would be better for 88db 4ohm tower speakers?
what is amp-pr0n ? 
yeah, they're quite cheap, slow ship but reliable,
and they seems to be right for this appliance! a little under-rated in max current (i think they originally came for TA2024 TA2020 or TA2021..) but good in toroid material, none of us has great electromagnetic experience to indicate different solutions, except diy'in them aircore, but anyway no precise indications or measurements or practical comparisions..
Open switches
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Try both of your power supplies to hear if you have a preference. The fan type heatsink should handle 32v no problem. The non fan heatsink might benefit from an upgrade or at least a refit with a better heat transfer adhesive for 32v.
Replacing the switches with a piece of wire could make a difference if you are running any of them closed for additional gain. All of my switches are open so they aren't doing anything in the circuit.
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Try both of your power supplies to hear if you have a preference. The fan type heatsink should handle 32v no problem. The non fan heatsink might benefit from an upgrade or at least a refit with a better heat transfer adhesive for 32v.
The new 14ga. air core toroids are playing and they sound better than the previous 20ga. cylindrical air cores which were already intriguing me. The toroids do exhibit much better EMI containment although not quite as good as the T106-2 cores which also leak a little more noise than the original little shielded bobbins. Long story short. This is the best sounding amp I have ever had home. Explosive dynamics with see through detail in a jet black background. And it runs off of a single $32.00 supply. I am now a true believer in the Tripath technology. Too bad they went out of business. Next up, some 14ga. Litz wire.
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Those are seriously great looking coils! I've got to make myself some. Where did you source the wire, Scott?
-dr_vega
nekkid amplifiers
Urban Dictionary: nekkid
pr0n - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wire
Magnet Wire - .0658 OD +0.0666"/-0.0651" Copper Core with Polyamide Coating, AWG 14 1LB Spool , Approximately 80 feet - SmallParts.com
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I had wanted to find readily available coils to save time on this project as I may end up using 16-20 channels, but as usual, whatever crazy idea I come up with to make sounds way better than anything I can buy. I have found out that with class D, the coil is the key to unlocking the bottle neck at the output to world beating sound.
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I also ordered some Ferroxcube cores today, not the optimum ones as they are unobtainium but something close, to see if by some miracle they will sound excellent enough but I am not holding my breath.
I had a roll of 14ga. Belden kicking around but it is too expensive now to buy again. It is up to $60 per 1 pound roll at Mouser. 60 feet? per pound at 14ga./.09 inch. I didn't actually measure or compute how much wire is in each coil but it used up quite a bit of the full pound for 4 coils. 8 feet each? Many of the builders at 41hz favor litz wire so I am going to try that next. I ordered some 14ga. from ebay, at $.17 per foot in large quantities if I decide to go with it, it is much more reasonably priced and theoretically has a chance to sound even better. Solid core 14ga. is available from SmallParts.com. The Belden is very nice but the cheaper wire may work and sound just as good.
Magnet Wire - .0658 OD +0.0666"/-0.0651" Copper Core with Polyamide Coating, AWG 14 1LB Spool , Approximately 80 feet - SmallParts.com
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I had wanted to find readily available coils to save time on this project as I may end up using 16-20 channels, but as usual, whatever crazy idea I come up with to make sounds way better than anything I can buy. I have found out that with class D, the coil is the key to unlocking the bottle neck at the output to world beating sound.
.
I also ordered some Ferroxcube cores today, not the optimum ones as they are unobtainium but something close, to see if by some miracle they will sound excellent enough but I am not holding my breath.
yeah, they're quite cheap, slow ship but reliable,
and they seems to be right for this appliance! a little under-rated in max current (i think they originally came for TA2024 TA2020 or TA2021..) but good in toroid material, none of us has great electromagnetic experience to indicate different solutions, except diy'in them aircore, but anyway no precise indications or measurements or practical comparisions..
On the T-forum people are removing the gain switches, it seems, because there is an improvement in sound. Is this better than just leaving the gain switches on OFF? Google translate is helpful, but I am a little confused on this issue.
An advantage of the nice small Tripath amps that has not been discussed is mounting them very close to the speakers thereby reducing the speaker cables to almost nothing.
I have mounted a Sure amp directly on the back of each of my Open Baffle speakers. Each Sure amp drives a 2-way speaker (I have active crossovers). My speaker cables are about 4 inches long. I'm using Cat-5 for them.
This configuration gets rid of the long speaker cables and replaces them with long interconnects between the preamp/crossover and the amps. But interconnects, carrying tiny amounts of current, do far less damage to the sound than speaker cables carrying large currents.
Even using mid-fi interconnects (since my crossover has XLR outputs, I'm using professional, rather than audiophile, cables), the improvement was dramatic. I had been using 6' long, 10 AWG OFC speaker cables. Getting rid of them made the sound much clearer and sweeter. I had been happy with the 10 gauge cables, but I'm much happier now that they are gone.
You can spend a ton of money improving your speaker cables, but a better, and cheaper, solution is to just get rid of them. Buying a second Sure amp is far cheaper than buying premium cables, and the result is much better.
It's worth considering, even if you have speakers with internal crossovers and you only use one side of each amp.
-dr_vega
I have mounted a Sure amp directly on the back of each of my Open Baffle speakers. Each Sure amp drives a 2-way speaker (I have active crossovers). My speaker cables are about 4 inches long. I'm using Cat-5 for them.
This configuration gets rid of the long speaker cables and replaces them with long interconnects between the preamp/crossover and the amps. But interconnects, carrying tiny amounts of current, do far less damage to the sound than speaker cables carrying large currents.
Even using mid-fi interconnects (since my crossover has XLR outputs, I'm using professional, rather than audiophile, cables), the improvement was dramatic. I had been using 6' long, 10 AWG OFC speaker cables. Getting rid of them made the sound much clearer and sweeter. I had been happy with the 10 gauge cables, but I'm much happier now that they are gone.
You can spend a ton of money improving your speaker cables, but a better, and cheaper, solution is to just get rid of them. Buying a second Sure amp is far cheaper than buying premium cables, and the result is much better.
It's worth considering, even if you have speakers with internal crossovers and you only use one side of each amp.
-dr_vega
we don't need google transalte, but we also are a little confused on this issue
Theoretically this tweak would be insignificant (according to observation wrote here before) Author fo this tweak gave some explainations about false contacts, or very near open contacts, which would not be ok..
Both here and there, it's quite a common and never-contrasted idea that this board suonds better with low-gain settings, so, if you don't need the other gain settings, you don't need these switches, so you can remove them.. less is better!
just joking..i don't need other gain settings, but i left switches in place, i don't care for them..
i also left the protection diodes, although it seems (both here and there) that board is better performing without them.. any comment on this tweak?
i'm not sure if i'll remove them, especially the one before the 5V regulator, 0.6v more dropout voltage on it, so a little more heating, but the goods?
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I just found the amp goes better with more voltage so I guessed I have the voltage over the diodes, too.
If you are worried about the regulator you might want to feed it separately anyway. Audio1st showed how to cut the traces. Im planning to add a floating preregulator, I'll report how that looks once I'm done testing.
Short wires and dual mono
Great post. That's one of those ideas that seems so obvious as to forget to mention. I normally have dual mono amp chassis with 18 inch speaker cables. The smaller, $17.00 150watt power supply might work well for dual mono with one channel driven.
Interesting. So it's preferable to have long interconnects (from say, a preamp) to the amps/speakers than speaker cables covering the same distance?
That's been my experience and I think there is pretty general agreement on that. Because speaker cables carry higher voltages and currents, all of the bad things are magnified, except outside noise that filters in. If the interconnects pickup noise, the noise is amplified when it goes through the amp. Noise the speaker cables pick up doesn't get amplified. That's why speaker cables are seldom shielded.
The next big step is to get rid of the interconnects, too. I'm using a modded Behringer DCX2496 digital crossover. I have a second one that I have not yet modded. I will put one crossover next to each speaker and run 1 foot interconnects to the amps. Interconnects from the source (CD player, etc) to the crossovers are digital and aren't supposed to degrade the sound (let's save that discussion for another thread).
BTW, Scott (sendler) has a great website with good info on modding the Behringer digital gear. He also does the mods for those who don't want to diy.
-dr_vega
Ah. Thanks doc. Looks like I'll be getting another amp
The Behringer I'll be saving for down the road, when I get a better handle on the speaker design side of things. Baby steps!
Care to elaborate on what 'bad things' speaker cables do that interconnects are free from?
We're getting way off topic for this thread. You can find lots info about wiring in many forums. It remains a science and an art and a mystery. There's lots we know and lots we suspect, and lots we don't know.
The core issue is that current passing through a wire creates an electromagnetic field. This field affects how the current flows. The more current is flowing, the stronger the electromagnetic field created and the more it affects the flow of current. Therefore it's better to run the current through the wire while the current is still small.
In concert stage setups, the amp racks are placed right behind the speaker stacks. The snake cables run the mic level signals out to the mixer (often more than 100 ft), the mixer preamps the signal to line level and returns it down the 100 ft snake to the amp racks where it is amplified to speaker and runs to the speakers on 10 ft speaker cables. This is done primarily for sound quality reasons, although cost is sometimes a consideration, too.
It would be a lot more convenient for the sound engineer to have the amps up there with the mixer, but sound quality dictates that the amps be next to the speakers.
-dr_vega
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