Which aleph is right for me?

[taymat]

Myself and my friend have almost decided to build a aleph amplifier. The amp will be our first so wish us luck. However I have a problem, which aleph amp should I choose? I play a lot of modern rock music and some lighter stuff like ennio morricone and coldplay. I will probably connect the amp to some diy speakers and marantz cd5400 with a simple diy pre-amp to get started. My room is about 22ft by 9ft and I will have the speakers at one end of the shortest walls. I've got a lot of wooden furniture in the room as well. My budget for my amp is a max. of £300 ($500 approx). Hey I'm a student! Anyway tell me please whats the aleph for me! I just want it to sound even better in all respects than other good similarly priced amps like rotels ra-01 and marantz pm7200. I'm not worried about the amount of components I have to solder or make with my mate. But talk of matching components, etc with multimeters and bias are getting me worried. What do these words mean and how much (if any) of this setting up and batch component buying is required to get an amp running at its best? I know you must hear these similar questions a lot but you all seem like nice blokes so please help me with all I want and need to know to build a 'giant killing' diy amp Thanks.

[ftPeter]

mmm... I think i'm gonna just write up a short bit of info about each of the aleph amps from the manuals. I was thinking of output wattage, transformer specs, other interesting info, links to pictures of peoples projects. Maybe this will give the wiki a bit of a boost and provide some other people to pop some info on. I sure as heck don't have any experience with this stuff but this will definitely give me a bit of an education.

cheers,
--peter

[moe29]

Your budget may be the deciding factor in what Aleph amp you
can build. Transformers and Heatsinks for an Aleph 2 could well
eat more than half your allotment... not saying it can't be done,
but you'll have to really work at it.

Your speakers will have a lot to say about your selection too.
Aleph 3 = 30 watts, Aleph 5 = 60 watts, Aleph 2 = 100 watts.

If this is your first amp and you're interested in the Pass offerings
i'd suggest reading up on the ZEN series over on PassDIY web
site. It's a very educational series. They sound good too.

in the end there's no easy answer to your question... just read,
read, read and read some more, a build some stuff and go from
threre! If you're really into it - the journey is well worth it.

[Peter Daniel]

I would probably go with Aleph 5. It is better than 3 and much cheaper to build than Aleph4 or 2. That was actually the Aleph I built.

[Duck-Twacy]

There is a little company in Holland that did sell matched mosfets

http://www.specmail.nl/

They even have their own general purpose Aleph pcb.



Building an Aleph5 for about 300 pounds should be possible, if you don't use the more expensive parts (is not really necessary).

If your speakers are 92 db/w/m or better, then an Aleph3 probably also is sufficient (as long as the impedance of the speakers is not too low). I understood an Aleph3 has a little higher bias per mosfet, thus can sound a little better.

[mefinnis]

I would suggest you build the Aleph5.

The hardware costs virtually double going to the A4/2 for an extra 40W, which you will hardly notice (a little over 2dB actually).

I have built/own both ..... I use the Aleph5 day-to-day.

My speakers are 89dB/W :

http://www.vaf.com.au/new_home.htm?c...oducts/i66.htm

Providing you don't go for poor efficiency speakers the 60W will be fine.

Cheers
Mark

[Bricolo]

Taymat, do you want only one Aleph, or a stereo pair?

The Aleph 3 and 5 are stereo amps, but the 2 is a monoblock

[protos]

I would not worry too much about matching.If you get mosfets from the same batch/ lot code they would probably be close enough for most purposes according to my experience so no need to get a 100 of them. If you need 12 power mosfets you could probably buy around 20.Remember you only need to match them in groups of three for aleph 5.
The most expensive part of the aleph are the heatsinks by far.Should be about 40% of the total if new.If you can get surplus then that should be a great saving but that needs a lot of looking around plus some luck.

[Cr3ator]

Originally posted by Bricolo
Taymat, do you want only one Aleph, or a stereo pair?

The Aleph 3 and 5 are stereo amps, but the 2 is a monoblock

All those designs are mono's. But if you build 2 you got a stereo pair
It's also possible to build both monoblocks in one casing, so you'll get one stereo amp.

I'm building an Aleph 5. It's my first DIY Amp but if you take the time and have a lot of patience it won't be a real problem. Total costs for me: ~ € 400,00

[Bricolo]

Originally posted by Cr3ator



All those designs are mono's. But if you build 2 you got a stereo pair
It's also possible to build both monoblocks in one casing, so you'll get one stereo amp.

I'm building an Aleph 5. It's my first DIY Amp but if you take the time and have a lot of patience it won't be a real problem. Total costs for me: ~ € 400,00

I meant that the original 3 and 5 were stereo amps