"The Wire" Ultra-High Performance Headphone Amplifier - PCB's

opc

Member
Joined 2004
Paid Member
Hi Guys,

I've attached an updated list that should be complete as of this post. I'm still waiting to hear from a few people, but hopefully that will clear itself up over the next few days.

dggs pointed out a mistake on my parts list for the PSU, so I've corrected the quantities and the reference designators accordingly and the new parts list is attached here. I'm also reducing the price from $39 down to $35 because there were a few too many caps on the list. I checked the others over again, and they look correct, but please feel free to verify them against the schematics. Thanks for the catch dggs!

Cheers,
Owen
 

Attachments

  • Price List for PSU.pdf
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  • THE WIRE - SECOND RUN - UPDATE 9-21-2011.pdf
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Hi,
Please add 2 PSU kits (for power amplifier input stage)

Thanks!

Also, may I make the suggestion to throw a couple more resistors in the kit to offer the ability to chose between, say, a gain of 1 and a gain of 2, as a 0db gain doesn't leave enough headroom with some high impedance phones. It would increase the versatility of the headamp at little additional cost.
 

opc

Member
Joined 2004
Paid Member
Hi Guys,

No payments yet, as I still need to test all the boards on arrival.

Here's the schedule:

- GB closes Sunday September 25th (this Sunday)
- Place PCB order Monday September 26th
- Boards arrive two weeks later on Monday October 10th
- One week to assemble and test all variations brings us to October 21st
- Payments will start to be accepted October 21st and boards/kits will ship out the following week.

I hope that clarifies things!

Cheers,
Owen
 

opc

Member
Joined 2004
Paid Member
Hi Guys,

I've attached a few pictures of my evening tonight. I enjoyed a pretty spectacular sunset with a glass of wine on the balcony, and then spent the rest of the night auditioning the SE-SE headphone amp test circuit done up on the previous version of The Wire.

I've got measurements I'll post tomorrow, but in terms of listening, it sounds exactly like the BAL-SE version which is a good thing! The bottom end is superb and it's dead quiet in terms of background noise. I tried two different SE sources and both worked very well. It would be decadent overkill for a portable setup, but I think that's what I'll be doing with at least one of my boards.

By the way, if you haven't listened to the album XX by The XX, then you really should get on it.

Cheers,
Owen
 

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  • THE WIRE - SECOND RUN - UPDATE 9-23-2011.pdf
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if thats decadent overkill, whats this? which is what i intend driving the bal-bal with, ive already lashed up a bal-bal using 2 x bal-se boards and the sound is pretty brilliant!!

has onboard regs for a transformer coupled spdif comparator (separate board not pictured) on mini bnc, reg for buffalo dac with separate reg with sense/feedback for the xo, onboard toslink, a basic volumite like circuit and dual mono bipolar supplies for the balanced IV, i'll run the wire direct from the batteries and possibly put additional decoupling at the psu input. but the batteries have insanely low outputz and very high current capability so no reg shouldnt be a problem, i dont think the bipolar chips will cut it as far as current for the balanced wire, we'll see

oh i know what you'll say...insanity..... its insanity

also has start up/shutdown and battery voltage monitoring and indication that puts the regs into low voltage shutdown by driving the shdn pins low
 

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