Sure Electronics New Tripath Board tc2000+tp2050

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I dont know if any of you guys have the same problem, but when I listen to "bring me to life" by evanescence, the bass in the intro of the song seems misplaced. Its not the record, but it might be the speakers OR it might be the amp.
Running a 2.5-way B&W set. (seems like the tweeter and the woofer are out of phase, or dont mix that well together)
Other songs sound great.
 
Did you dummyload the other channel? These amps don't really like being run "open loop"...

Also, I said it before, fans output EMI, often a substantial amount and I would do anything to remove it. It would be the first thing I would mod. It should also not be necessary to have it, all TK2050 amps I have built (up to 50Vdc!) don't need employment of a fan at all.

Either that heatsink is too small or the output filter is not working properly....or both....(probably both...)

I ran the amp only one speaker connected since I don't know what a dummyload is. About the fan I remove it now. Maybe 2x100 requires a fan but I need max 1x40 so my heat prodction should be less than a fourth?
 
I dont know if any of you guys have the same problem, but when I listen to "bring me to life" by evanescence, the bass in the intro of the song seems misplaced. Its not the record, but it might be the speakers OR it might be the amp.
Running a 2.5-way B&W set. (seems like the tweeter and the woofer are out of phase, or dont mix that well together)
Other songs sound great.

Very interesting to read this as its the same for me too, but its with all music, except one CD ! I can not put my finger on why, but things just sound 'odd' and with a hole in the mid-range (most noticeable with vocals). I have checked the wiring many times and all is fine.....
 
I dont know if any of you guys have the same problem, but when I listen to "bring me to life" by evanescence, the bass in the intro of the song seems misplaced. Its not the record, but it might be the speakers OR it might be the amp.
Running a 2.5-way B&W set. (seems like the tweeter and the woofer are out of phase, or dont mix that well together)
Other songs sound great.

Its in the speakers.
The passive woofer (.5) is causing some distortion of some kind, as it kinda laggs behind the normal woofer.
The tweeter and the amp are fine :D
 
Thank you Dr_Vega. Putting extra tank caps under the board makes sense. Those are some big *** inductors. Did you try winding air toroids? Not that they are any smaller. I'm going with the Arjen coils for now, and have some Wurths on back order. There is someone selling 5A T-amp coils on ebay and they will match them to 1%. Choke coil for class-D T-Amp 10uH 5A - eBay (item 270558842628 end time May-05-10 06:35:43 PDT)

Regards,
Free

I didn't try to wind air torroids, they would be larger and use a lot more wire. Scott (sendler) has posted pictures in this thread of his air torroids.

Arjen's coils are much better than stock. The air coils are that much better than the Arjens. Scott says the Wurths are as good as the air-coils. I haven't heard them, so I can't comment except to say that I value Scott's judgement.

-dr_vega
 
Hello,

i think trying another air toroid is a mistake,the wiring out the board can not provide good results,i've try to build UCD clone,the layout was the basic error.

otherwise:

for the tk2050,

noise is comming from the fan ,it's obvious
the best and easy way is to connect the fan ground dirctely to the 0 V supply.to avoid common impedance.

when the kit comes,we can easily transform the heatsink.
there is another heatsink whith a fan,i've screwed it with the another (without the fans )

i'm still listening whith it,temp is about 45° with 25° ambient temp.

very good amp for the price.
 

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well I managed to confuse myself even further.
I bought a 3886 with 6N11 tube buffer and I need 26 0 -26 dc as well as 6.3 to 8 V ac in another location.
So how do go about getting a power supply for it, or I need 2 power supply's.
Thanks.
Srinath.

How is the tube buffer going ? Be interested to hear what you think of it. I have recently sold my Musical Fedelity X10D (Mk 1), had it since new from the early 90's, it use to sound wonderful back then but not now (unless my hearing has gone to pot*). I replaced the valves, but the magic was no longer there and sold it.

There are plenty on ebay to be had, even fully made are reasonably priced. Any ideas which sound best ?

tube buffer, Consumer Electronics, Tube Amplifiers, Preamplifiers items at low prices on eBay.co.uk
 
when runing my setup at over 25v on the meanwell 24v, it just sounded how i would have previously expected class d to sound- a little harsh all round.

i have no idea why realy, maby its running components above there ideal voltage inside the smps, maby the chip prefers lower voltage, maby its the reduced ampage available, maby its just mine!

Ok, I have got round to playing around with the voltage setting, and you are absolutely right. Its verging on horrid when turned up that 10%, turning it back to 24v the sound is so much smoother and three dimensional, the bass weight has returned too !

I think I am correct in saying that efficient speakers need lots of volts and inefficient (and normal) ones love plenty of amperage.
 
Turning up vs turning down

Ok, I have got round to playing around with the voltage setting, and you are absolutely right. Its verging on horrid when turned up that 10%, turning it back to 24v the sound is so much smoother and three dimensional, the bass weight has returned too !

I think I am correct in saying that efficient speakers need lots of volts and inefficient (and normal) ones love plenty of amperage.
The impaired sound quality at 25v must be related to turning the adjuster of the power supply to a higher setting than the nominal 24v design spec, rather than because of the 25v value of the voltage it's self. I am running a 36v supply turned down to 32v with fantastic results so voltages higher than 24v can still sound great. Running on two car batteries at 25.2v is slightly better than the SMPS but I believe that is because of the cleaner, 100ah battery power and in spite of the lower voltage. This may be answering a question I had asked earlier in the thread as it seems that turning a 36v supply down to 32v will be better than turning a 27v supply up to 32v. If I get time (next winter?) I could try modding the feedback resistors to optimize the amp for 36v to compare against a 32v amp to see if the supplies are really at their best only when adjusted dead on to the rated voltage or if turning them down is still just as good.
 
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I ran the amp only one speaker connected since I don't know what a dummyload is. About the fan I remove it now. Maybe 2x100 requires a fan but I need max 1x40 so my heat prodction should be less than a fourth?

This is not a conventional amplifier, this amplifier is ALWAYS switching. The difference between running at full output or at idle is fairly little. I have seen T-amps that run hotter at idle than at full output...
 
noise is comming from the fan ,it's obvious
the best and easy way is to connect the fan ground dirctely to the 0 V supply.to avoid common impedance.

Connecting it elsewhere will not block the emission, this is not guaranteed to get rid of the noise. Your passive solution is rather sound though, not very elegant, but if it works it works...

But, what on earth did you place on the outputs? Are those gigantic zobels? Why?:confused:
 
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The 4 channel amp is worse in reliability because the heat sink doesn't contact the chips well and the dc off set adjustment circuit doesn't give enough range of adjustment without a mod to jump some resistors. I would rather have the other, 2 channel board without the crazy piggyback output board but it looks like Sure is determined to get rid of the 4 channel boards. If the dc can't be adjusted to less than 5mv per leg, tell Sure you demand the other board.
Scott, with all due respect to the contributions you've made to the forum, I feel you're being a little hard on the 4 channel amp. First, the 8 surface mount resistors surrounding the 4 DC offset trim pots can be fixed in about 5 minutes, by unscrewing the heat sink, then painting them over with a small paintbrush dipped in conductive paint. Second, surely we can devise some better heat sink solution, I mean how hard can it be compared to prying out the inductors, and replacing them with hand-wound inductors for example?

Anyway I wanted to talk about batteries. I have a line on some novel Lithium Iron batteries (LFP-NCO) (see here)that I'm guessing may be worth testing out as an alternative to SLA batteries. Because they have a discharge c-rate of perhaps 4, I'm guessing that they could deliver power effortlessly and that this would improve the sound. Do you think it would be worth trying, string 8 10mAh cells together to hold 80mAh and provide 26.4V. I suppose the board wouldn't draw 320 amps, but my intuition is having it available for transients can't be a bad thing. Plus FWIW these batteries are more eco-friendly than having lead and acid in your house even if its sealed.
 
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80mAh?

Scott, with all due respect to the contributions you've made to the forum, I feel you're being a little hard on the 4 channel amp. First, the 8 surface mount resistors surrounding the 4 DC offset trim pots can be fixed in about 5 minutes, by unscrewing the heat sink, then painting them over with a small paintbrush dipped in conductive paint. Second, surely we can devise some better heat sink solution, I mean how hard can it be compared to prying out the inductors, and replacing them with hand-wound inductors for example?

Anyway I wanted to talk about batteries. I have a line on some novel Lithium Iron batteries (LFP-NCO) (see here)that I'm guessing may be worth testing out as an alternative to SLA batteries. Because they have a discharge c-rate of perhaps 4, I'm guessing that they could deliver power effortlessly and that this would improve the sound. Do you think it would be worth trying, string 8 10mAh cells together to hold 80mAh and provide 26.4V. I suppose the board wouldn't draw 320 amps, but my intuition is having it available for transients can't be a bad thing. Plus FWIW these batteries are more eco-friendly than having lead and acid in your house even if its sealed.

Sure arbitrarily substituted a 4 channel board with two channels disabled so they wouldn't just immediatley burn up without telling him after he ordered from a listing with a picture of the two channel board with the fan. Very devious. I personally have 13 of the fanned type amps and wouldn't want any of the 4 channel boards.
.
Did you miss type the 80mAh rating? AA NiMh cells have 2200mAh each. An 80mAh battery will only last 15 minutes powering the amp. 10Ah would be enough capacity between over night charges. Battery power is a slight improvement over a MeanWell SMPS but for me it is not enough of difference to bother with.
 
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Sure arbitrarily substituted a 4 channel board with two channels disabled so they wouldn't just immediatley burn up without telling him after he ordered from a listing with a picture of the two channel board with the fan. Very devious. I personally have 13 of the fanned type amps and wouldn't want any of the 4 channel boards.
.
Did you miss type the 80mAh rating? AA NiMh cells have 2200mAh each. An 80mAh battery will only last 15 minutes powering the amp. 10Ah would be enough capacity between over night charges. Battery power is a slight improvement over a MeanWell SMPS but for me it is not enough of difference to bother with.
I didnt' realize Sure was doing that. I meant the 4 channel board ordered as a 4 channel board and delivering 4 channels. I use it to bi-amp my speakers. Though I agree setups where a 2 channel board is mounted right on the back of the speaker are nice.

I did miss something in my haste, the batteries are 10Ah, not mAh! That is going to be overkill. I should try their 40g 1.7Ah (1700mAh) cells instead.

But my larger question is if anyone thinks the C-rate will help the sound. They have a C-rate of 4; not sure what the C-rate is for SLA but its less than 1. I had to look it up here http://www.valence.com/technology/glossary "C-rate – A notation of current magnitude, expressed relative to the time required to discharge the rated discharge charge capacity of a cell or battery. A 1C rate corresponds to a current magnitude that would discharge the rated discharge charge capacity in 1/1 hour. A 2C rate would correspond to a current magnitude twice that of the 1C current, i.e. the rated discharge charge capacity divided by 1/2 hours. A 0.5C (C/2) rate would correspond to a current magnitude half that of the 1C current, i.e. the rated discharge charge capacity divided by 1/0.5 (=2) hours." Of course we're not running at the full c-rate, my idea was just that a high c-rate meant a battery that was eager to deliver power on demand.

My friend is kind of a beta tester for these batteries, I think they even have a 1000mAh 3.2V unit for less than $2, so I could string together 10 of them for 32V. The 1000mAh should then last about 3 hours. Have I got the math right this time? How much does the amp draw? How would by battery driven plans affect the other typical board mods, some would be un-needed with battery power?
 
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Talking about cooling for the 4-channel board, when trying to cool multiple components with a single big heatsink thermal pads between each component and the heatsink are recommended to avoid bad contact.
That makes sense to me. I think what happens is its hard for Sure, on a $50 board, to get all 4 amp IC's on the same exact horizontal plane and same height. Sure tries to solve this with big globs of thermal paste. But thermal paste is not all that efficient in thick layers. See 80 Thermal Pastes Tested I would try 4 separate "northbridge" heat sinks originally for PC motherboard.
 
Series charging?

@temp123456
I've tried LiFePO4 batteries - non-doped, less capacitance and C rating than the ones you're looking at. I was running a 2.6Ah 12.8V pack into an Amp11 ... and it was quite simply excellent. Looooong running time, fautless sound. I was using batteryspace.com LiFePO4's.

Here's a mildly rambling writeup I did on 41hz.com: LiFePO₄ batteries
How do you charge them?
 
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