Aleph - Can You Give Me A Hand To Decide Wich One To Build?

[b_online]

Hello,

I am planning to build ESG1 +PHL 3430x2 speakers from Andre Perrault or a Thiel Ceramic c-12+c-79+Eton 8-800 speaker system.


I also want to build a Pream, power amp or monoblocks, and a phono stage.
Could you give me your advice on what is the BEST I can build to match my speakers?
Pass Labs projects seem good, but I don't have a clue on which are their best projects in terms of sound quality.....


Any help will be greatly appreciated!


Thanks for the help,

B

 

[paulb]

How much money do you want to spend? Or is cost no object?

 

[b_online]

Cost

Cost for speakers: around 2000-3000 us dollars.
Cost for amps: whatever I need to drive the speakers correctly.

Thanks for the help

B

 

[Dane]

This has been asked before, and a search brings up several links including:
  Aleph Choice
  The sound of the Aleph 5
And perhaps most important Nelson's comments on the various Aleph models.

From my own experience, building the chassis is the hard part.
Monoblocks require 2 chassis, and ramping up the power from 30 to 60 to 100W are really
just incremental costs increases that are managable. (but 200W was over the top for me)

 

[Panelhead]

This has been asked before, and a search brings up several links including:
  Aleph Choice
  The sound of the Aleph 5
And perhaps most important Nelson's comments on the various Aleph models.

From my own experience, building the chassis is the hard part.
Monoblocks require 2 chassis, and ramping up the power from 30 to 60 to 100W are really
just incremental costs increases that are managable. (but 200W was over the top for me)

The amount of heat coming off even a 100 watt version would deter me. The Zen V4 seems to generate almost as much heat as my 10 watt OTL amp. This is about a 20 watt version.
This week that is plenty to be dumping into my listening area. I used to used a high power amp in winter (Dec - Jan) and a low power in summer (March - October).In the spring (Feb) and fall (Nov) I swapped back and forth.
Single ended is just not very Houston friendly.

George

 

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

"The amount of heat coming off even a 100 watt version would deter me."
__________________________________________________

I disagree with that perception. I live in Salt Lake City and it gets darn hot here too. In fact I also have my bias wide open, they run even hotter than normal bias, and there has not been a problem with the thermal switch shutting things down. But I also used extra large, Texas sized, made in Texas heatsinks that gave me almost twice as much sinking as the factory units have. If you don't have room for huge sinks you can easily go with water cooling. Any Aleph would run cool, even if operating within 100 miles of the sun with water cooling. Search for Gray Rollins posts on water cooling...I believe he posted pics of his water scheme.
Don't give up hope cause of heat!! Seems like the hotter they run the better they sound......
Mark