CA 340A SE LM3886 based amp - Upgrade advice please.

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Hello, Mike.
It sounds nice, but not as good as I want :D
Clean and detailed HF, very clean and magic guitar, powerfull and rather detailed (better then stock) bass responce.
But mids not so good as HF and LF. When I listening to dinamic music with vocal, drums and guitar at the same time, singer's boice is a bit agressive, and I want to volume down... In fact I'm listenng music at about 10hour on volume knob, so I think 40-50Wt of Azur's power is enough for me, and I even thinking on building class A amp, with about 2*10Wt output power...

BTW, If You are interested, please listen to Dolores O'Riordan - Ecstasy... It's some moments when she sings the word "ecstasy" and it sound not so realystic with my setup.

P.s. This weekends I has a ouble blind test for next three opamps:
NE5532, OPA2134, AD828.

And i can say that ne5532 is very good opamp for it's price.
The differences between them were not so signficant I thought before...
Ad828 and OPA2134 sound more detailed, and NE5532 has more BIGGER but less detailed bass. At the same time , HF are a bit bright but naturaly with AD828, so now i have this Opamp in my Azure.
 
Thats good news Stream. ;)

Possibly some other opamps will give better midrange, but be aware tht the local decoupling caps will change how the opamp sounds. The OPA2134 I think recommends 1uf Tantalum in the datasheet. I got some Military spec Tantalums to try out soon. From what I have read about Tants they can give very nice bass.....but some report a grainy treble and suggest a small value film bypass to cure it. Be sure to experiment with the decoupling on each opamp (different values/types) you try before making a judgment on its performance.
 
Hi all.

Just had a quick read through this thread again. Brought back some fond memories! I must say a huge thank you to all for keeping your patience with me, and to Chris for the PM conversions. Also thanks to AndrewT for trying your best to advise me. I've since gained some more knowledge and experience and find I agree with you these days! :D

Anyway, the reason I came back to this thread is that I have made a couple of tweaks to the amp recently:

BEFORE (stock)
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CURRENTLY (work in progress)
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


Its got Naim poweramps boards, dual Avondale audio suplies, and 2 x 225VA traffo's. The the input switching is done my relays and works in conjunction with the original front panel control PCB, as does the output relay. I have full remote function and discrete class-a premap's (Australian, sorry Chris :D ) running on Teddy Pardo regulator's. Control circuits/input switching has own separate supply.

I need to do a bit more work refining the amp, few tweaks to try, then there's the casework to sort out. I'll be filling in the holes left by the vacant volume/balance controls and and various socket's, then re-painting with automotive high gloss metallic black. You can just make out in the picture my new shiny volume knob.

It sounds very nice by the way ;) , and its no longer a CA I suppose :D
 
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