New proud owner of Aleph 5

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I became a proud owner of an excellent amp Aleph 5. It was tough job for me because it is my first DIY project, but I did it and now it's up to you to judge.
Technical side:
Dual mono construction with two 350VA 2x28V toroids. 8 (4 per channel)BC components electrolytics 33000uf 63V series 154. Excellent caps. One 50A high quality rectifier per channel. Silver plated copper wire throughout PS. 5mm copper plates to connect caps and keep them together.
Kristijans PCBs. Riken resistors, Black Gate Std and FK series 220uf caps. Jensen copper in oil 47nf cap. Mills 5w source resisors 1R and 0.5R. FETs matched to 0.05V. Differential pair to 0.01V. Silver wires for input and output. WBT speaker terminals and Audio Note silver RCA connectors.
I had some problems with grounding (terrible humm) but after experimenting and changing ground scheme few times I succeded in removing humm completely. If there is anybody
interested in the grounding scheme I implemented in the amp I'll be happy to post it here.
Sound is just marvelous. Transparent, detailed and microdinamics is awesome. Soundstage just "exploded" all around my room. I never heard something better than that, and I used and listened to a lot of mid-fi amplification systems. I have to let it burn in for at least 100 hours (Black Gates). Temperature on the heatsinks is around 55 degres Celsius.
I ordered Solens 2.2uf for the bypass in PS, and I'll use the 2uf cap across Zener diode Z5 as Master suggested.
Any comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks everybody for help, and especially one big Thank you very much to Nelson and the Pass Labs crew.
 

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What is this...2 1/2 hours and nobody has told you what a wonderful job you did....let me be the first.

Bonito. A lot of money and time very well spent.

Be warned. If you reconnect one of those mid fi units, you won't be able to stand how awfull it sounds after listening to an Aleph for a week.

Good job. And I would be interested in ground changes. I'm most interested in what hummed so I can avoid it.
 
Grounding scheme is attached.

First I've put all the grounds in one point in the center of chasis. Humm was terrible. Then I've connected GNDs from PCB, speaker terminal, XLR and RCA GND to the GNd of the PS (to the big copper board beetwen PC caps) and then used a thick wire to connect it to the center point of chasis together with earth from AC Euro AC connector. Less humm, but it's still there. Then I saw Nelson's A75 article and used a resistor and two diodes together with different ground wiring (on the picture). Humm dissapeared completely. I didn't find out what was the problem, but it's not a problem anymore, that's important.

Arcam A85 ($1300) on the pictures is an integrated, but it can also work as a pre or power amp. I'm using it as a pre now. I'll let Aleph burn in for few days or maybe weeks before judging, but as I can hear now the difference is huge. Compared to Aleph, Arcam sounds too harsh, flat soundstage and very bad high frequencies. No emotions at all in music. It's not able to make you just relax and enjoy the music. When listening to Aleph you are just taken into the music. Arcam makes you think about sounds coming from the speakers and analyzing these sounds. I'll report more detailed soon.
 

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roibm,
It was alltogether around 900€. I have a feeling it can't be better than this. I didn't measure how much power it sucks, but it's supposed to be around 300W all the time. I have a theory about these cost issue. I paid for Arcam A85 around 1100€. Compared to an Aleph5 it's a piece of **** definitely. So, if I make Aleph5 for 900€ and AlephP for lets say 500€ (that's how much I'm planning to spend), I'll have the best amplificaion in the world for 300€ more than Arcam A85 costs. I love DIY!!! ;)


JC Fardo,
I won't be using balanced until my Aleph P1.7 is done. Then I certainly will.
Nelson said that you can use wire to connect FETs to PCB and they can be long few inches to a foot (<30cm).
Speakers are B&W 603s3, lightly modified X-over. But after Aleph P is done I'm getting new ones for shure.
 
Boris You know it is a beatiful job and that it works like hell so I won't tell You that again. I have listenned to that "little" thing and with suitable preamplifier it would be something special (it is now allready)- now it doesn't show his true potential unfortunatelly.
B&W speakers that Boris is using lost their sharpness and work more easilly then with arcam. Everything seems to get in places where it belongs.
A lot of time and energy and money was involved here and it has come back - really great job- just want to drop a note.:D
regards
daniel
 
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