Chip Amp Photo Gallery

[StigErik]

Originally Posted by sasmit

I bet they do ... u should also have 0.1 uf soldered right onto the last caps ...if u don't have them already

Yeah, I had them close to the LM3886. Everything was hardwired by the way, no PCB. The amp had just one channel by the way, a single LM3886 and a very big PSU.

[robertor]

Lm1875, the little brother of Lm1876(ouverture serie national).

[portreathbeach]

Here is my LM3875 Gainclone amp:


The aluminium parts


Half of the assembly (home made amp PCB)


Both amp PSBs in place


DC protection board with power LED attached

[troystg]

Not bad work with the gainclone, but AWESOME work with the van!! Holy crap!!

[portreathbeach]

Cheers troystg. The van was a big old project

[portreathbeach]

Had to add another post.....

I have been listening to the amp all afternoon and was so amazed at the quality that can be obtained from such a minimal amount of components. I was convinced that it sounded better than my Denon amp, so I called a friend to come and audition it. He brought over some well recorded orchestral music and after half an hour of listening, is convinced that it sounds as good as his £3000 Arcam setup. He said he was stunned at the ease of listening of the music produced.

Can anyone else comment on comparisons to other high end audio equipment? I've only used cheap components in the amp and can't wait to build some mono blocks with higher quality components.

[udailey]

It just flat out DOES sound better than a lot of high dollar stuff. A badass power supply can make it even better. Something like the F5 supply is really nice. I finally like my new build. I used the Gold Tone caps in power supply from Nichicon. It took a loooong time for them to loosen up but finally things broke through and the veil it had is gone. I like Panasonic FC on the 100uf if you used 100uf on Pins 1,3 and 8. They are super detailed. Some say to harsh. I like it that way I guess. However while this smokes a lot of silicon amps in the stores most tube amps I have listened to in the past few years have beat it handily. Not cheap tubes mind you so for sure the chip amp wins out over the tubes in sound quality per dollar.
Nope, dont have specific amp references.
Uriah

[portreathbeach]

Thanks for your reply udailey. What do you mean by an 'F5 supply'?

At the moment, my power comes form a toroidal transformer feeding 2 cheap bridge rectifiers. The output of these goes straight to my amp PCBs. I have no smoothing caps at all on the power supply, and all of the components used on the amp boards are standard cheap ones. The idea of this first build was to see the music quality achievable with basic parts.

My plan is to replace my Denon 7.1 surround amp with a cheap pre-amp, capable of AC3 decoding, and drive my speakers with mono blocks built from LM3875s. Has anyone had any experience with 'HLLY High End DTS AC3 5.1'?

[Pato666]

WOW, you're a PRO!

VERY GOOD design!

Thanks for sharing, that can give us ideas. I loved your pimped van also, very nice post!

did you milling all the aluminium parts by yourself?

Regards.

[portreathbeach]

Hi Pato666. The milling was done on a cheap pillar drill with an end mill in the chuck.

An example of how I produced the hole for one of the phono sockets:

1. Drill a 6.5mm hole through the aluminium
2. Use a countersink bit to expand the hole to about 21mm
3. Use a 20mm end mill to mill the hole to the desired depth.

The countersinking bit is used to give the end mill a bit of guidance. Without the angled sides that the countersink bit makes, the end mill (when used in a cheap pillar drill) seems to bounce around and doesn't drill very well at all.