Hi to evryone,
I am new in this field, but you made me curious, I want to build one! I am steel undecied between ZAPpulse and UDC, any suggestions?
What it's not realy clear to, me is the difference between them. From your posts I cannot see what are the sonic differences between the two.
Let me know, bye and have a nice weekend
I am new in this field, but you made me curious, I want to build one! I am steel undecied between ZAPpulse and UDC, any suggestions?
What it's not realy clear to, me is the difference between them. From your posts I cannot see what are the sonic differences between the two.
Let me know, bye and have a nice weekend
Slash... I'm aiming to buy an AMP2 from Jan at www.41hz.com but he is making a PSU board right now and I will wait for that board to be finished first...
The tripath won a duel between ICE and UcD180... Pretty much the same sound as the ICE-module but at a price that is 1/3 of the ICE-module....
Tripath vs Hypex vs ICE (In Swedish )
The tripath won a duel between ICE and UcD180... Pretty much the same sound as the ICE-module but at a price that is 1/3 of the ICE-module....
Tripath vs Hypex vs ICE (In Swedish )
Matsen said:Slash... I'm aiming to buy an AMP2 from Jan at www.41hz.com but he is making a PSU board right now and I will wait for that board to be finished first...
The tripath won a duel between ICE and UcD180... Pretty much the same sound as the ICE-module but at a price that is 1/3 of the ICE-module....
Tripath vs Hypex vs ICE (In Swedish )
In my case the Marantz amp that I have and that is using the same Tripath TA3020 chip was loosing big time from my UcD180s.
Gertjan
Ah audio and tastes...
I find that many less-experienced listeners (some of whom actually work for audio magazines) are easily enticed by euphonic error mechanisms (errors that sound nice - at least initially) like 2nd harmonic distortion and resonant HF boosts.
The latter is at issue here. Amplifiers that have no correction for the output filter (e.g. tripath) have a frequency response which is mostly determined by the output filter. When a resistor of precisely the rated load impedance is attached, the frequency response will be flat. For higher load impedances, there will be a boost at the end of the pass band. Most loudspeakers are inductive at high frequencies and at 20kHz they easily exhibit an impedance several times the nominal value. So, for most loudspeakers an uncorrected amplifier will actually boost the high frequencies significantly (several dB's).
One would expect such an HF boost to sound harsh. Not so. If the boost is a mild resonant peak, you can put on several dB's at 20kHz before a change in tonality is heard. Instead, the soundstage becomes deeper, sharper and more airy. Interestingly, if the boost is a shelf, you get none of this. The sound only gets aggressive.
The boost produced by an underdamped LC filter is definitely of the former, nice sounding kind.
At times it's legitimate to employ this trick. Occasionally I master CD's and many dull and flat sounding recordings liven up quite a bit when a mild peak of +2dB, Q=2 at 20kHz is applied. EQ may be used when artistically merited, that's what the stuff is for.
You don't want your replay chain to do that for you however. There is no kind of sound processing that you can blindly apply to any incoming audio and hope for an improvement every time. Beware of amplifiers that double as sound processors.
Critical listening will in the end always lay bare any colourations one's system is producing, but it takes an unusually well-trained listener to catch the more subtle effect at the first listen. In the meantime, some conservatism helps. If a new amplifier sounds radically different from another one which you used to hold in high esteem, there's usually something fishy going on. The very best linear solid state amps, tube amps and class D amps sound surprisingly similar.
I find that many less-experienced listeners (some of whom actually work for audio magazines) are easily enticed by euphonic error mechanisms (errors that sound nice - at least initially) like 2nd harmonic distortion and resonant HF boosts.
The latter is at issue here. Amplifiers that have no correction for the output filter (e.g. tripath) have a frequency response which is mostly determined by the output filter. When a resistor of precisely the rated load impedance is attached, the frequency response will be flat. For higher load impedances, there will be a boost at the end of the pass band. Most loudspeakers are inductive at high frequencies and at 20kHz they easily exhibit an impedance several times the nominal value. So, for most loudspeakers an uncorrected amplifier will actually boost the high frequencies significantly (several dB's).
One would expect such an HF boost to sound harsh. Not so. If the boost is a mild resonant peak, you can put on several dB's at 20kHz before a change in tonality is heard. Instead, the soundstage becomes deeper, sharper and more airy. Interestingly, if the boost is a shelf, you get none of this. The sound only gets aggressive.
The boost produced by an underdamped LC filter is definitely of the former, nice sounding kind.
At times it's legitimate to employ this trick. Occasionally I master CD's and many dull and flat sounding recordings liven up quite a bit when a mild peak of +2dB, Q=2 at 20kHz is applied. EQ may be used when artistically merited, that's what the stuff is for.
You don't want your replay chain to do that for you however. There is no kind of sound processing that you can blindly apply to any incoming audio and hope for an improvement every time. Beware of amplifiers that double as sound processors.
Critical listening will in the end always lay bare any colourations one's system is producing, but it takes an unusually well-trained listener to catch the more subtle effect at the first listen. In the meantime, some conservatism helps. If a new amplifier sounds radically different from another one which you used to hold in high esteem, there's usually something fishy going on. The very best linear solid state amps, tube amps and class D amps sound surprisingly similar.
Bruno Putzeys said:
Hi Bruno,
My UcDs sound radically better then anything else I have heard in my house, I hope nothing fishy is going on
I guess not, I'm still surprised every time, not only with music but even more with DVDs (movies). DVDs have voices and natural sounds that you hear all around you in everyday live, I'm not going to a concert hall everyday, so those natural every day sounds seem te be more familiar to me. They sound incredibly real.
Best regards
Gertjan
One man told me I can build high power amp based on LM4651 +drivers such as UBA2032, L6384 +output transistors. Drivers and transistors work at high voltage and LM4651 works at lower acceptable voltage. We can use the bridge configuration and as far as I understood it is possible to get unlimited power for the subwoofer...
Did anyone seen the fully tested and working schematics of amp like I described above? If so, can anyone share it with me?
Did anyone seen the fully tested and working schematics of amp like I described above? If so, can anyone share it with me?
Lm4651»4652
I have those two chips from National Semiconductor and I´m
looking forward to build an amplifier based on those chips.
The problem is the PCB for them, are you aware of any board
available for sale? National doesn´t have it nor should it be available in the near future, even though all the files to construct
the board are in their site....
I have those two chips from National Semiconductor and I´m
looking forward to build an amplifier based on those chips.
The problem is the PCB for them, are you aware of any board
available for sale? National doesn´t have it nor should it be available in the near future, even though all the files to construct
the board are in their site....
Bruno Putzeys said:
The above matches my experiences quite well after building amps based on a UCD400 and a Zappulse 2.2SE, and comparing them to my Threshold S/500 stasis II.
The UCD and Threshold sound quite similar overall with a little cleaner and tighter sound from the UCD but a slightly prettier sound from the Threshold with a little more power in the bass. I think the UCD actually sounds a little more natural and less hashy, but the two amps are really quite close to each other.
The Zap was quite different. On some pieces of music, it sounded wonderful and was more engaging than the UCD or Threshold. On other pieces of music, it sounded artificial and just plain weird. What's interesting is that any recording of non-electronic instruments is where the Zap was at it's worst, i.e., most classical music, piano, etc. Also, any music with a wide dynamic range fared rather poorly with the amplification seeming to be nonlinear at different volume levels of the music. But the power and bass of the Zap were excellent, and on the music where it worked, it had a very clean and nice sound.
In summary, the Zaps just didn't work for me. Sometimes I thought they sounded great, but then I'd listen to something else and wonder what happened. Overall I slightly prefer the UCD to my Threshold because of it's slightly cleaner and more natural presentation, and I'm looking forward to the UCD700; the little extra oomph is addicting.
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