Sure Electronics New Tripath Board tc2000+tp2050

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I have to admit to idea of running one of these amps from batteries intrigues me. Not
because it would necessarily sound better but because I like the idea of having a small solar
panel charging the battery.

Having said that, I live in the Pacific NW and having a solar powered anything may not be the best idea!:D
 
I also received my board a couple a days ago. I have replaced input caps, removed those voltage limiters, added a big capacitor on the psu, replaced heat sink which is somehow glued to the chips. Still I want to change those output coils and those capacitors on the output. In the sure scheme there is a value 10uH and in the tripath scheme is 15uH and on the board is (I guess) 22uH. Also those bigger gray capacitors are 680nF instead of 470nF as in the scheme of sure. Can somebody confirm my findings and what would happen if I change 680nF output caps with some wima 470nF. Regards Aleš

If you put 47nf in then you will need 10uH inductors but I don't know if they are the correct filters for the Tripath chips used. My guess is that the 68nf caps are matched to the 22uH inductors, there should be a couple of big resistors in there too. That is standard fair for a Tripath output filter.

col.
 
Effects of DC offset

Can someone explain the effects of DC offset on the sound?

I read on the forum that it's good to make it close to 0 so I adjusted the servo to make it close to 0. I can't actually make it a fixed value. On my multimeter, the value swings from about 0.4 to 2.0 and I am not sure if it's normal.

Anyway, after I have reduced the offset, I feel the sound has become brighter. I think there is more detail in the highs, but sound is a little too bright or even brittle to my liking and I think it lost bit of warmth.

I understand it's individual preference but I am just asking what the general effect of DC offset on the sound is.

Is what I am experiencing normal if I feel that sound has become brighter after reducing the offset?

BTW, I have also adjusted the PSU to generate 29V. It is rated 24V 6A but I figured out I can make it generate maximum of 29V by adjusting the servo on the PSU.
 
There is no apparent hiss or noise that I can hear.

When I powered the amp with the Mean Well SMPS for the first time (which was before I played with the DC offset), everything sounded as usual. No sign of hiss or noise when the source is not playing. I would say dead quite to quote Audio1st.

When playing music, I even felt that there was more thumping in the lows and the sound was well balanced even at low volume compared to when I powered it through my old laptop adaptor rated at 12V 3A.

Then I played with the DC offset and the sound became all too bright ..but I don't recall hearing any noise.

My speaker's sensitivity are rated at 89dB.
 
Thanks for your suggestion.

I have tried listening different recordings and I think the problem is only with certain recordings where there are a lot of "tzz" "tzz" coming from cymbals.

I will try setting back to the previous setting. To be honest, it's a bit tricky to set the servo to certain exact value.
 
Personally, I would prefer you look at the single chip version :)

But then, I think the number of people having the two chips version does and will outnumber that of people having the single chip version so I guess if the democracy is to rule, you'd better use two chips version as the basis of your experimentations.

To my untrained eyes, they don't seem to have much difference but then I know nothing of electronics as you probably have known by this time :)

Thank you, panomaniac, for taking time to investitage more of these boards.
 
panomaniac said:
A question:

ttan asked me to look this over as I have experience with this chip set. But should I be looking at the board with one power chip or two? They are a bit different.

Thanks for taking a look at this chip set, I assume looking at the Virtue Amp you were holding and explaning the virtues of this amp from YouTube that it is based on a single TA2050. I will be buying the dual version.

So far I have purchased 4*12V batteries to power up this amp, arranged in series and parallel. Also the necessary parts to design a smart charger for these batteries altogether less than US$80(cheap and worthwhile to check it out(*)). If there is significant improvement in the sound quality over the SMPS then I sure will report here.

Cheers.


* Danny from GR research reported significant improvements.
 
pic1

Well here is my board in case, still isn't completely finished.
The board with this big heatsink doesn't go over 30°C, I also changed output coils to 10uH and caps to 470nF.
 

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Re: pic1

mravlcax said:
Well here is my board in case, still isn't completely finished.
The board with this big heatsink doesn't go over 30°C, I also changed output coils to 10uH and caps to 470nF.


Hi,

where you get your toroid inductors that fit in also perfectly? How do feel assured that these toroids are of good quality? Is you PCB 2*50W or 2*10W version?

please report back how it sounds.

thanks.
 
Re: Re: pic1

ttan98 said:



Hi,

where you get your toroid inductors that fit in also perfectly? How do feel assured that these toroids are of good quality? Is you PCB 2*50W or 2*10W version?

please report back how it sounds.

thanks.

Well I had these coils laying around and they have thicker wire than those stock coils, thats the reason I changed them. My board is 2*100W version and it sounds great for the money that was put in the project. I compared it to a solid state amp that uses 2sc5200/2sa1943 on output and has all high quality components(dale resistors, nichicon muse, silver mica, jantzen superior z on the input, etc). This amp has natural sound and the highs are very relaxed compared to this sure amp which has a bit aggressive highs but it has better bass. Overall I can say that the solid state amp is better. The test was done on the tannoy m1 modified speakers and the source was asus xonar D2 soundcard.

Regards Aleš
 
audio1st said:



It is silent...
This is the Sonic Impact with impact!
This to me beats the Gainclones that I have built, fantastic detail with slightly less warmth than the GC's. Large soundstage..

I've ordered a second.

This is very helpful comment, is there a pictorial summary of what can be done to improve the sound?, I am a newbie with solder gun...




panomaniac said:
It's a switching amp, there is already a ton of noise.
Batteries are OK, but a good switching or linear supply often sounds better - for power amps.
And batteries are not as quiet as you might think....

Is there a DC adapter from a web site link that would be good for this?

gychang
 
Re: pic1

mravlcax said:
Well here is my board in case, still isn't completely finished.
The board with this big heatsink doesn't go over 30°C, I also changed output coils to 10uH and caps to 470nF.

basic newbie question, what compound do u use to "glue" the heat sink to the chip? Does the stuff used for CPU ("thermal silver??") also has the glue properties?

thanks,

gychang
 
My heatsink is so big that it can't be just glued to the chip. It is screwed from the bottom side. If you look at the picture on sure page you will see two holes and between the chip and heatsink is ordinary thermal paste also used for cpu. You were also asking which DC adapter to use, I suggest something that has 24V and 5A. My psu is a bit underrated but I don't listen very loud.

Regards Aleš
 
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