Thanks barrows,
I see.
So the joke is the fact that the expensive commercial offerings use Bruno´s OP amp buffer whereas lucky DIY´ers can acquire the less expensive nc400 with Bruno´s discrete buffer -which the DIY´ers in fact called for themselves, and which reportedly sounds worse than the nc1200 which instead measures worse.
....And then we are to learn that none of the "snake oil" stuff that the commercial vendors do can "in fact" cause the preferred difference in performance to the mere nc400???
- I guess that "joke" isn´t that funny around here
Total inconsistency
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Let me guess..... A piece of alu with two boxes milled inside, the smps behinde the IEC and the nc1200 on the other side? Plain rocket science!
And they did not bother to make a proper standby psu for the trigger input, it only mutes the nc1200 and does not put the smps in standby.
With low-efficiency speakers the amp with more power will always have the advantage. But can you tell me if they sound different with normal eff. speakers?????
My speaker array comprises two identical monitors per channel, each monitor is 8 Ohm nominal/5.3 Ohm minimum. I have the unique ability to load my Ncore with two otherwise identical loads, 10.6 Ohm minimum or 2.65 Ohm minimum.
With 9AWG Ncore was more pure and transparent into 10.6 vs. 2.65 Ohms. With 4AWG parallel with separate 30AWG Ncore results inverted.
I suspect a certain percentage of persons not necessarily enthralled with Ncore heard it with less than ideal speaker cable.
How many speakers with 87.5 dB sensitivity (mine) can handle more than the 500W my NC400 make into the 2.65 minimum impedance load?
My dual Dynaudio Esotec 17cm and dual Esotec D260 appear to thermally compress before NC400 runs out of steam, even in .35cf sealed enclosures and active HP crossed 2nd order @ 80 Hz! And that's three Trinaural channels, not two/stereo, in only 3k cf with moderate absorption/diffusion. (Admittedly 1st order @ 2.2 kHz, but tweeter is padded down 3-4 dB.)
Thanks barrows,
I see.
So the joke is the fact that the expensive commercial offerings use Bruno´s OP amp buffer whereas lucky DIY´ers can acquire the less expensive nc400 with Bruno´s discrete buffer -which the DIY´ers in fact called for themselves, and which reportedly sounds worse than the nc1200 which instead measures worse.
....And then we are to learn that none of the "snake oil" stuff that the commercial vendors do can "in fact" cause the preferred difference in performance to the mere nc400???
- I guess that "joke" isn´t that funny around here
Total inconsistency
Man, that is depressing.
The DIY community screamed for discreet for NC400, which costs more, sounds worse, and measures better than the NC1200 op-amp which costs less, sounds better, and measures worse?
Is it not true that op-amps have multiples higher tolerance? What made the op-amp measure worse?
Man we are stupid! Or Bruno was for accommodating us!
Tell me you're kidding, puhleeeeeze!
Who said the discrete input sounds worse????
How much NC1200 amps are there on the market today??
It’s not Hypex' fault but the quality of this thread went from average to unpalatable over the last weeks. Yackety-yak and hearsay promoted to facts, fan boys and ignoramuses with philosophies bashing what they consider dissidents and hardly any actual information. It’s annoying and I'll unsubscribe now.
Suckered?
If this is true I'd want the NC1200, as I care about music rather than numbers on a spec sheet, Bruno is a numbers guy at least what I have read leads me to believe that. If the NC400 is indeed inferior then the opamps in NC1200 must be some fantastic beasts, or maybe the discrete circuit in the NC400 is.....Oh never mind I'll save my money for devialet d premier.
If this is true I'd want the NC1200, as I care about music rather than numbers on a spec sheet, Bruno is a numbers guy at least what I have read leads me to believe that. If the NC400 is indeed inferior then the opamps in NC1200 must be some fantastic beasts, or maybe the discrete circuit in the NC400 is.....Oh never mind I'll save my money for devialet d premier.
Oh never mind I'll save my money for devialet d premier.
You clearly like crappy numbers
If this is true I'd want the NC1200, as I care about music rather than numbers on a spec sheet, Bruno is a numbers guy at least what I have read leads me to believe that. If the NC400 is indeed inferior then the opamps in NC1200 must be some fantastic beasts, or maybe the discrete circuit in the NC400 is.....Oh never mind I'll save my money for devialet d premier.
Yes for him numbers is the game and music is the claim
That said, there are no indications that the buffer stage is vital to the reported differences -neither numerically nor musically.
Reading way too many specs sheets on various class D amps the tendency is that higher power ratings relates to higher distortion numbers -if everything else is equal. There is absolutely no reason to believe that this is different for the Ncore variants. -at least if one looks at the numbers.
Interesting though, is that this number-game in practice does not seem to be consistent in how it conveys into music...
My hunch is that the reason lie partly in the implementation and partly in the control circuitry´s dependence on rail voltage.
Has anyone compared similar implementations of the two Ncore variants -e.g. same type of chassis and exactly the same PS ?
What PSU's are these? And, can you feed two ncore modules from a single PSU board?
What Bruno said iirc, a long time ago, for this is a very long thread, is that he designs for both measured and audible transparency between input and output, and that he uses measurements to help determine the cause of what he can hear.
He said that one of the ways he determines audible transparency is by comparing (listening to) the differences between the input and the output signals. I am sure he has listened to both the nc400 and nc1200 and his and hypex's observations are not simply based on measurement. I also suspect that the observations won't have been based simply on component substitution of nc1200 for nc400
Whether he is right or not is, of course, up to us all to interpret individually
He said that one of the ways he determines audible transparency is by comparing (listening to) the differences between the input and the output signals. I am sure he has listened to both the nc400 and nc1200 and his and hypex's observations are not simply based on measurement. I also suspect that the observations won't have been based simply on component substitution of nc1200 for nc400
Whether he is right or not is, of course, up to us all to interpret individually
What Bruno said iirc, a long time ago, for this is a very long thread, is that he designs for both measured and audible transparency between input and output, and that he uses measurements to help determine the cause of what he can hear.
He said that one of the ways he determines audible transparency is by comparing (listening to) the differences between the input and the output signals. I am sure he has listened to both the nc400 and nc1200 and his and hypex's observations are not simply based on measurement. I also suspect that the observations won't have been based simply on component substitution of nc1200 for nc400
Whether he is right or not is, of course, up to us all to interpret individually
You are right, I recall Bruno to say something very similar to what you describe.
But the question -regarding observations - is always about the conditions under which they were produced. Observations are staged through instruments and methods and are by no means ever entirely "objective" in the word´s strictest sense.
Making comparative listening between a source´s output and that source´s output run through an amp must mean that the instrument was headphones - which as far as I know, is what Bruno use for that kind of tests.
I would be very hesitant to convey interpretations made through earphones onto speakers. We simply can´t neglect that speakers are a very different load than earphones that can be driven by a source component. When strong current flows change direction through the O/P stage and (unfortunately) through the ground plane as consequence of a speakers dynamic load, be sure that the conditions for the observation changes
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