I have used Hypex amps since 2010. First was the UCD-400HG HxR and last 2-3 years i have been listening to nCore NC400. I always knew it was good, but i did not know how good. I think, now i have better idea of that.
I bought Marten Design Bird 2 speakers a while ago. These are very revealing yet musical speakers and they require that the electronics are top notch or they will show or rather tell you the problem. I did amp "upgrade" for them and got another amp. This amp has had praising reviews and for the price it was too tempting offer, so i bought it. It sounded ok, but not amazing like i heard the speakers earlier. First i thought that the speakers need more burn in (Accuton's speaker element really need burn in).
After a week or so, i was getting anxious about heavens not opening, so i decided to put my old nCore amp back. Well, there is the problem! Sound was airy, with big staging and yet powerful, just the way i like it. Not lifeless and small and kinda suppressed especially when listening at lower levels. I am very happy again with my trusty nCore amp. They seem to do the job and I am not going to slip away from them again
. For me nCore is the perfect amp. It doesn't care if you use it with $1000, $10000 or $100000 speakers. It will deliver. I am amazed what these puppies can do. Perfect match with Marten speakers.
I am telling you new nCore owners - when you build your nCore amp, it's no toy or overly priced DIY amp. It could very well be the last amp you'll ever need! Think it that way. Build it well, built it clean, build it with love, and use the best parts available. It deserves that.
I bought Marten Design Bird 2 speakers a while ago. These are very revealing yet musical speakers and they require that the electronics are top notch or they will show or rather tell you the problem. I did amp "upgrade" for them and got another amp. This amp has had praising reviews and for the price it was too tempting offer, so i bought it. It sounded ok, but not amazing like i heard the speakers earlier. First i thought that the speakers need more burn in (Accuton's speaker element really need burn in).
After a week or so, i was getting anxious about heavens not opening, so i decided to put my old nCore amp back. Well, there is the problem! Sound was airy, with big staging and yet powerful, just the way i like it. Not lifeless and small and kinda suppressed especially when listening at lower levels. I am very happy again with my trusty nCore amp. They seem to do the job and I am not going to slip away from them again
. For me nCore is the perfect amp. It doesn't care if you use it with $1000, $10000 or $100000 speakers. It will deliver. I am amazed what these puppies can do. Perfect match with Marten speakers.I am telling you new nCore owners - when you build your nCore amp, it's no toy or overly priced DIY amp. It could very well be the last amp you'll ever need! Think it that way. Build it well, built it clean, build it with love, and use the best parts available
. It deserves that.
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I have used Hypex amps since 2010. First was the UCD-400HG HxR and last 2-3 years i have been listening to nCore NC400. I always knew it was good, but i did not know how good. I think, now i have better idea of that.
I bought Marten Design Bird 2 speakers a while ago. These are very revealing yet musical speakers and they require that the electronics are top notch or they will show or rather tell you the problem. I did amp "upgrade" for them and got another amp. This amp has had praising reviews and for the price it was too tempting offer, so i bought it. It sounded ok, but not amazing like i heard the speakers earlier. First i thought that the speakers need more burn in (Accuton's speaker element really need burn in).
After a week or so, i was getting anxious about heavens not opening, so i decided to put my old nCore amp back. Well, there is the problem! Sound was airy, with big staging and yet powerful, just the way i like it. Not lifeless and small and kinda suppressed especially when listening at lower levels. I am very happy again with my trusty nCore amp. They seem to do the job and I am not going to slip away from them again
I am telling you new nCore owners - when you build your nCore amp, it's no toy or overly priced DIY amp. It could very well be the last amp you'll ever need! Think it that way. Build it well, built it clean, build it with love, and use the best parts available
Thanks for your listening impression of the ncore.
I have recently purchased 4x Ncore and 4x UCD400HG HxR for going fully active on a 4-way speaker using Seas mag drivers. Will be using Najda as the DSP pre-amplifier. Primary source of music is CD and USB.
Ncores are pricey, but with all the good reviews around and the fact that they are very efficient and still high performance compared to very expensive OEM high end amps, i had to try them out.
Having said that, most good and competent amplifiers should sound transparent and i personally find it difficult to make out sound difference. Thats just me, nothing against those who do sense audible differences.
Would be getting on with the amp builds shortly, will likely bombard this great thread with questions for the nice folks and experts to review and guide from experience.
I am planning to use this chassis.
DIY Full Aluminum Case Enclosure Amplifier Chasis Pre Amp DAC Headphone Box | eBay
Two flavors of amplifiers. Each chassis has 2 channels. A total of four chassis, 2 of each type.
A. 2x UcD400HG HxR + 2x SMPS400
B. 2x NC400 + 1x SMPS600
please advice if the above chassis is suitable from cooling perspective
another option is
2609 Full Aluminum Chassis Preamp Box Power Amp Enclosure Case DIY | eBay
This is slightly taller at 84 mm vs 62 mm of the previous one, rest of the dimensions are the same.
These cases have ventilation slots on the top cover, but none on the bottom panel.
Would ventilation holes be required on the bottom panel to help some form of cooling upward air draft?
DIY Full Aluminum Case Enclosure Amplifier Chasis Pre Amp DAC Headphone Box | eBay
Two flavors of amplifiers. Each chassis has 2 channels. A total of four chassis, 2 of each type.
A. 2x UcD400HG HxR + 2x SMPS400
B. 2x NC400 + 1x SMPS600
please advice if the above chassis is suitable from cooling perspective
another option is
2609 Full Aluminum Chassis Preamp Box Power Amp Enclosure Case DIY | eBay
This is slightly taller at 84 mm vs 62 mm of the previous one, rest of the dimensions are the same.
These cases have ventilation slots on the top cover, but none on the bottom panel.
Would ventilation holes be required on the bottom panel to help some form of cooling upward air draft?
With only 2 amps per box, you should be fine.
They wouldn't hurt - I suggest drilling a bunch of holes in the bottom panel (I assume the bottom panel won't be visible anyway), but for them to be effective, you need to make sure there is enough of an air gap under the bottom panel.
The Ghent ones are very much more than Siliconray or the others mentioned. Plus they have a very good layout for the back panel, quite superior to the special $75US SiliconRay 2207 enclosures designed for a monoblock nCore400:
siliconray re2207-jrnc enclosure for ncore
Please note that James Romeyn does *great* work and is very responsive, so I'm sure his finished amps will behave very well. That said, the Ghent rear panels place the power, output, and input correctly, but the 2207s above have inputs in the middle, not as good a position. Both input and output need to be extremely close to the back panel and the input ought to be on the far side of the AC input. However re the Ghent, I would not put a RCA jack on my nCore, the input is not shielded and that bothers me. The much better way to accept an unbalanced input is through the XLR jack. See RaneNotes on AES48 and audio grounding practices for a great tutorial.
However, all of the chassis shown except the nice 2609 from jojip here have the wrong arrangement of the PS. That 2609 lacks rear cutouts though, ouch. TheO's A18 is worse still (I'm sorry to say) because the AC input cable rests alongside the PS output cable for a fair distance. Also the amp module should be rotated clockwise for the best wiring solution. The SiliconRay 2207 designs and their knockoffs fit the nCore into a tiny space, but the penalty is excessive hookup cable runs to the AC input of the PS and from the output of the PS.
The best arrangement is to *rotate* the PS 90 degrees clockwise (viewed from the top). This means the chassis needs to be about 3" deeper, but the two runs I mentioned will be much shorter, with much less inductive coupling. Yes, proper twisting knocks that out pretty well, but why invite trouble? An ideal solution would be the Ghent rear panel cutouts on a SiliconRay 2207L (=long version) or the taller 2209 chassis modified with a properly cut rear panel:
siliconray re2207L
siliconray re2209pc-pro
And slots should be present fore and aft, and some vents underneath. A bonus for the 2207L is that you could have a attractive, laser-engraved front panel. I spoke with James a year ago about getting a raft of chassis (20 minimum) built this way, and had a very positive conversation with him, but I got sick for a whole year and had to back out. I hope to finish the project so that he can complete for me four channels that have been gathering dust in my living room.
A well-built amp inside the current Ghent or 2207 chassis will probably measure the same as the best layout, but if there are some process mistakes like insufficient cable twisting, the performance of the amp could suffer in comparison to the less-inductive-coupling design I propose.
I think the best layout I've seen, without costing a fortune, was by barrows about 3000(?) posts ago. Wires were long but perfectly laid out.
Just my $.02
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Weird noise on amp output
Hi All,
I'm almost done building my nc400 based amp, but struggling to identify the source of some noise at amp output.
The amp is a single-chassis combination of a dsp board running an active crossover, a multichannel dac and 6 channels of smps600+nc400 combo.
It runs and sounds good, but when I'm listening very close, a few cm from the driver a periodic noise can be heard on all channels.
I tried to identify the source of noise, but could not manage to find it out.
I made recordings of the dac output with my sound card, and there it seems to be pretty clear, down to around -118db. Normalizing the recording (~88db), the noise seems to be a white noise with no evident periodic patterns. (Recording was done with an emu 1820m, it should be pretty much free of any sound card artifacts).
However, at the same time I also recorded directly the loudspeaker output. That's around -69db at level, but when normalized to 0db, one can clearly hear a periodic pattern. It's roughly every 50ms.
I attached the two audio files recorded, probably somebody has some hints what this can be.
Thanks in advance,
igy
Hi All,
I'm almost done building my nc400 based amp, but struggling to identify the source of some noise at amp output.
The amp is a single-chassis combination of a dsp board running an active crossover, a multichannel dac and 6 channels of smps600+nc400 combo.
It runs and sounds good, but when I'm listening very close, a few cm from the driver a periodic noise can be heard on all channels.
I tried to identify the source of noise, but could not manage to find it out.
I made recordings of the dac output with my sound card, and there it seems to be pretty clear, down to around -118db. Normalizing the recording (~88db), the noise seems to be a white noise with no evident periodic patterns. (Recording was done with an emu 1820m, it should be pretty much free of any sound card artifacts).
However, at the same time I also recorded directly the loudspeaker output. That's around -69db at level, but when normalized to 0db, one can clearly hear a periodic pattern. It's roughly every 50ms.
I attached the two audio files recorded, probably somebody has some hints what this can be.
Thanks in advance,
igy
I assembled mine, love the sound. Its ridiculously transparent compared to my tube amp.
One issue, the DC offset pots were grossly out of spec from the factory. I suggest everyone check and reset the offsets after letting them warm up.
Input offsets were 150mV and 500mV (yes half a volt!) and output offsets were just below 200mV on both units. Get each of them as close to 0mV as you can.
Remember to disengage nAMPON when checking/setting the input offset (from noninverting input and ground)
One issue, the DC offset pots were grossly out of spec from the factory. I suggest everyone check and reset the offsets after letting them warm up.
Input offsets were 150mV and 500mV (yes half a volt!) and output offsets were just below 200mV on both units. Get each of them as close to 0mV as you can.
Remember to disengage nAMPON when checking/setting the input offset (from noninverting input and ground)
I thought so. It is rather steep. Anyone else faced this importing from Hypex into the US?
Yes, got raped to the tune of $230CDN. I am not sure why they Hypex used the Tariff code "Amplifiers Other" which cost $75 in Duties when they should be using 851840 (Amplifiers of Audible frequency) which is 0% Duty in Canada. The rest was sales tax and a $10 UPS fee.
Pic of my build in Ghent stereo case:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
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Yes, got raped to the tune of $230CDN. I am not sure why they Hypex used the Tariff code "Amplifiers Other" which cost $75 in Duties when they should be using 851840 (Amplifiers of Audible frequency) which is 0% Duty in Canada. The rest was sales tax and a $10 UPS fee.
Pic of my build in Ghent stereo case:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Thanks. Looks good.
I am going to use SMPS600 driving two NC400.
Could you tell me how you spliced a Y cable to connect the single SMPS to two nc400 modules? It could be trivial, but some visual example will help me do it well.
It will be much easier for an SMPS600, its just a 1:1 splice. Simply strip off some insulation of the end-to-end cable that came with the SMPS600 and attach another cable (came with the NC400's) to each of the wires and solder to that. Remove each wire one by one from the plug to heatshrink.
You get one normal cable and then a cable with connector only on one end. Just split the complete cable in two, sort all individual cables by color, apply head shrink tubes and then solder together and lastly heat the shrink tubes and you are done =)
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I forgot to mention, that there's no volume control, the dac output is directly connected to the amp, and volume control is done with digital attenuation. The noise on the amp output is independent of the digital volume and stays always at the same loudness. I verified using logic analyzer, that there's no junk data at the dac input from the dsp, the i2s lines are totally silent (0). The DAC is galvanically isolated from the DSP using Si8660 digital isolators.
Attached is a pic of the amp, though it's a bit unclean due to recent "debugging" session...
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