Advice wanted on Aleph P1.7 build

[albertNL]

Hi,

I am stuck and could use some advice.

Jaap (a friend of mine - a retired "genius with a soldering iron" - does the actual building for me) started on an Aleph P1.7 for me 4-5 years ago. We bought all the parts from a Dutch supplier (who supplied KK PCB boards). This was before I started reading this forum and realised Nelson frowns on suppliers offering kits.
We had very little information and had no idea what we were doing (we bought a kit, right?!). To cut a long story short, our supplier went out of business, Jaap cannot read English and I knew very little about electronics. So when we ran into trouble we just left it on the shelf to finish another day.

In the past year or so I have tried to read as much as I can and am starting to understand what we are building. So, the day has arrived!

We had not realised that the volume control and input selection supplied were Chinese parts. (It looks identical to this one: Préamplification - LITE V3310 4ch - Contrôleur de volume 4 voies ou 2 voies XLR )
When I found out that the volume and input control were Chinese parts (of unknown quality), I asked Jaap to take the Aleph parts out of the box and just leave the Chinese parts, because I wanted to hear what they sounded like. I tried it as a passive pre (instead of my old Yamaha CX-1000 preamp) in my study and am now glad I took it out of the Aleph P1.7 build! It does have good solid bass, but the highs scream out of the speakers. Nothing refined about it.

Back to the Aleph P1.7.
We tested the finished Aleph boards, and they work.
I have not really heard them yet, just confirmed that they work. I now need to make a decision about input selection and volume control. I was leaning towards using the Dantimax boards, but after reading about lightspeed (I gather consensus is that it gives a better sound than resistor based systems) I am not so sure. I sent a message to Uriah, asking him if the boards he sells can be used for an Aleph P1.7 (where a 1K attenuator is required). He answered that it could not.

So now I am stuck. I am open to all suggestions.

Thanks for listening.

Albert


PS Enclosed an old photo of the Aleph P1.7 build with all the Chinese stuff in the Chinese box.

[KatieandDad]

I've been looking into the Lightspeed ???

If you read the article in the margins of this site about the poor mans litespeed it might change your mind.

The poor mans litespeed exhibits some 6% distortion - It just leaves you wondering if it all hype.

[KatieandDad]

I bought a stepped 100K attenuator, this is also giving me problems.

My best advice is to look at hificollective.com. They do some very nice standard potentiometers. You pay for what you get, I'm back to ALPS pots and they sound perfect to me.

I'm using a Pumpkin/Shuntky with an Aleph 4.

[AudioSan]

i'm using Dantimax boards on my P1.7. and they do the job just fine.

[AudioSan]

here it is. not yet finnished.

[KatieandDad]

Papa knows his stuff.

I've been blown off my feet with my Aleph 4.

Iwouldn't mix digital volume controls with his circuitry though. Why feed fine wine through a dirty pipe.

[Zen Mod]

Dantimax stuff is good ;

besides - just control circuitry is digital - attenuator itself is analog - relay based

[KatieandDad]

I read somewhere that relays in the audio path are not good.

A 7 wiper ALPS pot is getting pretty good.

[Zen Mod]

don't believe everything you read somewhere

read , but check by your self

[KatieandDad]

Most relays use a very small contact area, usually two semi-spheres touching each other.

For some reason or other relay specifications rarely define the contact area.

A rotary actuator would be a good device with a leaf type contact.