Its been a year since the last shootout and we got together for another round here at my house. We were all loaded for this shootout! Loaded for bear!
LuckyLyndy attended and Bill W. brought his latest amp which is an Aleph 3 using ZVP-3310 MOSFETs for the input pair and CSS. Bill's brother Todd was also present for this shootout.
The ZVP-3310 has a much lower input capacitance of 50 pf vs. the 170 pf of the IRF9610. We all concluded that this lower capacitance translated into the ultra-detailed but still very smooth sound of his amp. We also compared his amp to the Aleph Mini and to the Krell KSA-50 Klone. The results were pretty surprising........
The Aleph 3 with ZVP's sounded super detailed and extremely smooth and spacious. Sound staging was excellent and in every respect surpassed the Mini Aleph and the Aleph 2's that also reside here. Next we switched to the Krell KSA-50 Klone..... Changing to the Krell lost just a little extreme detail at the very top end, but also moved you about 20 seats further forward towards the performance. Clearly the Krell was the much warmer sounding of the three amps compared, and it did so without any hint of harshness. The midrange was brought forward and there was a smoothness and liquidity to the bass extending into the lower midrange. Soundstaging was excellent. There was a dramatic difference in the bottom end between the three amps with it greatly extended on the Krell. The Krell definately had more punch than the other amps but it also had quite a bit more power. Comparison of the Krell to an Aleph 5 might be more fair. I have however I've compared it to my Aleph 2's and the Krell still has a more extended botttom end. Everyone agreed that the modded Aleph 3 was excellent, and a complete success, and Bill, who has horns, appreciated the effect that the mod had to enhance the top end of the Aleph 3 and to bring out the details in such a dramatic fashion. Like different wines, all these amps offer different strengths and weaknesses. But all can be enjoyed for their different approaches to good, musical sound reproduction.
We are planning another shoot-out in a month. Any local audio fans are more than welcome to attend!
System and gear............
Dynaudio Audience 9's--stock
12B4 Line Stage with cathode side css.... DIY
Aleph 3 with ZVP-3310's on the input pair and css....DIY
Krell KSA-50 Klone....DIY
Rosenblatz Grounded Grid Line Stage....DIY
Pioneer Elite DN-45A--stock
(Photos of the shootout to follow)
LuckyLyndy attended and Bill W. brought his latest amp which is an Aleph 3 using ZVP-3310 MOSFETs for the input pair and CSS. Bill's brother Todd was also present for this shootout.
The ZVP-3310 has a much lower input capacitance of 50 pf vs. the 170 pf of the IRF9610. We all concluded that this lower capacitance translated into the ultra-detailed but still very smooth sound of his amp. We also compared his amp to the Aleph Mini and to the Krell KSA-50 Klone. The results were pretty surprising........
The Aleph 3 with ZVP's sounded super detailed and extremely smooth and spacious. Sound staging was excellent and in every respect surpassed the Mini Aleph and the Aleph 2's that also reside here. Next we switched to the Krell KSA-50 Klone..... Changing to the Krell lost just a little extreme detail at the very top end, but also moved you about 20 seats further forward towards the performance. Clearly the Krell was the much warmer sounding of the three amps compared, and it did so without any hint of harshness. The midrange was brought forward and there was a smoothness and liquidity to the bass extending into the lower midrange. Soundstaging was excellent. There was a dramatic difference in the bottom end between the three amps with it greatly extended on the Krell. The Krell definately had more punch than the other amps but it also had quite a bit more power. Comparison of the Krell to an Aleph 5 might be more fair. I have however I've compared it to my Aleph 2's and the Krell still has a more extended botttom end. Everyone agreed that the modded Aleph 3 was excellent, and a complete success, and Bill, who has horns, appreciated the effect that the mod had to enhance the top end of the Aleph 3 and to bring out the details in such a dramatic fashion. Like different wines, all these amps offer different strengths and weaknesses. But all can be enjoyed for their different approaches to good, musical sound reproduction.
We are planning another shoot-out in a month. Any local audio fans are more than welcome to attend!
System and gear............
Dynaudio Audience 9's--stock
12B4 Line Stage with cathode side css.... DIY
Aleph 3 with ZVP-3310's on the input pair and css....DIY
Krell KSA-50 Klone....DIY
Rosenblatz Grounded Grid Line Stage....DIY
Pioneer Elite DN-45A--stock
(Photos of the shootout to follow)
Good idea, Mike, but I would like to hear the Aleph J version
Mike,
That Aleph 3 was so tweaked out, and had so many modifications, I wouldn't dare to tell you what else was done to it. The Audio Twins
should step in and explain their bizarre creation! Mark left his digital camera connection at work, or he would have put some photos up that would have been very good. The amp case he salvaged from a Smart amp looked great with his Krell Kanto Klone inside. Also, over in the corner was an old linestage of yours, that Mark has spent a lot of time fussing over. He keeps grumbling about "balanced" something about it...
I would like to hear the Abnormal Aleph 3 on the Audio Twins own system, especially their big horns, to get more impressions on its qualities.
It was good we had the listening session yesterday. It is snowing like crazy this morning, three inches in the valley, double that in the mountains. The ski bums at Alta and Snowbird must be in powder heaven!
Lyndon
Mike,
That Aleph 3 was so tweaked out, and had so many modifications, I wouldn't dare to tell you what else was done to it. The Audio Twins
should step in and explain their bizarre creation! Mark left his digital camera connection at work, or he would have put some photos up that would have been very good. The amp case he salvaged from a Smart amp looked great with his Krell Kanto Klone inside. Also, over in the corner was an old linestage of yours, that Mark has spent a lot of time fussing over. He keeps grumbling about "balanced" something about it...
I would like to hear the Abnormal Aleph 3 on the Audio Twins own system, especially their big horns, to get more impressions on its qualities.
It was good we had the listening session yesterday. It is snowing like crazy this morning, three inches in the valley, double that in the mountains. The ski bums at Alta and Snowbird must be in powder heaven!
Lyndon
Lucky,
Your comment "case he salvaged from a Smart amp looked great" makes me curious. Can you tell me a little more about the Smart amp? The only one I know about is a DH-220 clone with Hafler heat sinks suitable for a class AB 110 watts. Would they be big enough for a Krell clone?
I just happen to have two of these Smart chasses and have wondered what to do with them.
BTW, my years in SLC allowed me to be at least a P/T ski bum. Those were the days!
Your comment "case he salvaged from a Smart amp looked great" makes me curious. Can you tell me a little more about the Smart amp? The only one I know about is a DH-220 clone with Hafler heat sinks suitable for a class AB 110 watts. Would they be big enough for a Krell clone?
I just happen to have two of these Smart chasses and have wondered what to do with them.
BTW, my years in SLC allowed me to be at least a P/T ski bum. Those were the days!
Hi Dick,
Are you the Dick West that worked for Midwest HiFi back in the 70's? If so then we know each other.
The Smart amp I salvaged was a 6 channel beast, Model TA-6600 that was built for Smart by A-B Systems. These amps have proven to be VERY unreliable and A-B Systems is barely in existance for repairs to them. In fact I don't think A-B is more than a corner on some guys desk at the moment.
When one of these amps goes down it takes the entire theatre off line till it can be pilled out and replaced. They are heavy and round trip shipping to and from Smart is well over 100.00 and simply not worth the expenditure or the effort. Cinema owners don't like that sort of situation so we generally prefer to replace them with 2 or 3 2 channel QSC or CROWN amps.
I will try to post pictures of the shootout in the next couple of days. I unfortunately did leave my download cable at work.
Its up to Bill and Todd to make a post as to the mods they did. As far as I kow they just directly subbed in the ZVP3310A's in place of the 9610's. Hopefully Bill will post some info as he did the majority of the work on it.
Mark
Are you the Dick West that worked for Midwest HiFi back in the 70's? If so then we know each other.
The Smart amp I salvaged was a 6 channel beast, Model TA-6600 that was built for Smart by A-B Systems. These amps have proven to be VERY unreliable and A-B Systems is barely in existance for repairs to them. In fact I don't think A-B is more than a corner on some guys desk at the moment.
When one of these amps goes down it takes the entire theatre off line till it can be pilled out and replaced. They are heavy and round trip shipping to and from Smart is well over 100.00 and simply not worth the expenditure or the effort. Cinema owners don't like that sort of situation so we generally prefer to replace them with 2 or 3 2 channel QSC or CROWN amps.
I will try to post pictures of the shootout in the next couple of days. I unfortunately did leave my download cable at work.
Its up to Bill and Todd to make a post as to the mods they did. As far as I kow they just directly subbed in the ZVP3310A's in place of the 9610's. Hopefully Bill will post some info as he did the majority of the work on it.
Mark
Kinda funy as saleries back by you are still higher than here in SLC. I did just the opposite... left Chicago to come out here. I love the outdoors and was tired of all the traffic jams and congestion back there. Last time I went back to Chicago (about 7 years ago) I told everyone there that if they wanted to visit they'd have to come see me. Having spent 40 years living in Glen Ellyn and St Charles I have no interest in going back there again.
Mark
Aleph 3 mods
Hello all,
Mark,
Actually, I built this Aleph 3 on my own. Todd built the previous Zen he brought over last year.
This was my first amp I have ever built with the compliment boards Mark donated to me last year. I have spent a lot of hours on it buying different parts to try in it over the year. So, I would guess hundreds of hours picking what I found to be the most musical components and listening to see if I liked that one capacitor or not etc... I typically would buy three types of capacitors such as a metal film, silver mica, and or ceramic etc...
I did follow a previous thread that suggested Aleph improvements and implemented most of the suggestions on this thread. I would try one mod and then listen to the mod to see if I liked it or not.
More about my specific Aleph 3...
I am using my own custom wound toroids, which sets my rail at about 25.6 to 26 volts plus or minus rails under my very heavily biased load.
I am using 4 68K UF 50 volt capacitors with a 2.5 mH iron laminate core 18 gage inductors in a pi filter network. I am using a MKT .47 UF bypass cap on the capacitor bank. One for each rail. The power supply is a dual mono setup.
I removed the bias resister so that the Aleph runs wide open, which I had to add a fan to the heat sinks to keep it at about 55 to 60 degrees Celsius on the heat sinks. In the future, I would use twice as many heat sinks to keep it fanless.
I used the Aleph 5 feedback resister values and still added less feedback, since my horn speakers do not seem to need a lot of damping factor or control.
The high bias seemed to give it a lot of spaciousness. The other thing I liked from this previous thread was non polar capacitors for crossover networks. I replaced all 3 220UF capacitors in my MikeW Aleph boards, giving it a much more detailed and spacious sound compared to the electrolytics for some reason. I have not bypassed those yet. That will be another experiment down the road.
As mentioned already, I replaced the IRF9610's with the ZVP3310A Zetex mosfets. I found the ZVP3310A added a lot of extra detail compared to the IRF9610's. It was quite amazing at how much a difference it makes changing the input mosfets. I left the 10K ohm input resistance figuring it would have a lot less distortion in the upper frequencies, which hearing is believing. I know Nelson raised his Zen Version 4 to 47.5K ohm, but I felt lower would still give lower distortion still in the upper frequencies Plus that was one less thing to match again to my left and right channels.
I also tediously matched all resister values to each amp so that both channels are the same practically on their values. I have a electronic store that allows me to measure my parts before buying the parts with no extra charge, other than my many hours of time doing that on my own.
I think that was not needed now, because of how much the mosfets can vary while they warm up throughout their range.
The lower ZVP3310A input capacitance seems to allow a lot more of the original signal to get through, without the higher capacitance of the IRF9610 rolling off the highs. There is a night and day difference on how clear instruments sound--closer to real life compared to the more clouded sound of the IRF9610.
If someone else wants to try the ZVP3310, make sure you realize two of the pins are in the wrong sequence compared to the IRF9610. I learned that the hard way.
The neat thing about these mods are that it would be compatible with all of the Alephs out there. So, if you need a more powerful Aleph go ahead with these mods and have a much nicer Aleph with more power if you are unfortunate to not own efficient speakers.
I have a smaller version I have not completed yet, but plan on trying the IRF510 instead of the IRFP240's in the output stage. I guess I would call it a "Super Mini Aleph" of about 5 or 6 watts for my compression horns. I should have 1/5 the capacitance of the mini Aleph, so should hear even more clarity in my horn set up.
I was surprised to hear my first amp (the Aleph 3) actually had 20 seats of additional depth over the well renown Krell. That is quite a feat!!! I have always read the Aleph series have less depth and or spaciousness than other amps, but not in my tweaked Aleph 3 it seems.
With our 30ish year old ears, my brother and I further found at least 30 percent more resolution in discerning instruments compared to the Krell. Guitar strings just plucked right out of the air as though you were sitting in front of a live performance. Voices came out of thin air it seemed. It felt like a veil had been lifted. The spaciousness was truly a 3D holographic sound projection of the concert.
What was so surprising as Mark previously mentioned was even with all of this extra detail, the Aleph 3 still somehow sounded a lot smoother than the Krell. There was no hint of harshness with all of that extra detail.
I would have to let everyone chime in on their own opinions as to what they thought, because frankly the builders of the amps present would naturally favor their own creations.
The Krell sounded nice by itself and so did the Aleph 3. It was only when comparing them directly side by side that I noticed such a great difference.
The Krell really was a nice amp with very excellent bass. Both of these amps would work great bi amping. I would use the Aleph 3 for the highs and the Krell for the lows so that you could have the best of what both these amps excel at. Spaciousness and depth and super detail from the Aleph and dynamic bass from the Krell.
This shoot out is still not over yet. I still have some more mods to try out for the next time.
Mods never seem to end with my high end audio quest
Hello all,
Mark,
Actually, I built this Aleph 3 on my own. Todd built the previous Zen he brought over last year.
This was my first amp I have ever built with the compliment boards Mark donated to me last year. I have spent a lot of hours on it buying different parts to try in it over the year. So, I would guess hundreds of hours picking what I found to be the most musical components and listening to see if I liked that one capacitor or not etc... I typically would buy three types of capacitors such as a metal film, silver mica, and or ceramic etc...
I did follow a previous thread that suggested Aleph improvements and implemented most of the suggestions on this thread. I would try one mod and then listen to the mod to see if I liked it or not.
More about my specific Aleph 3...
I am using my own custom wound toroids, which sets my rail at about 25.6 to 26 volts plus or minus rails under my very heavily biased load.
I am using 4 68K UF 50 volt capacitors with a 2.5 mH iron laminate core 18 gage inductors in a pi filter network. I am using a MKT .47 UF bypass cap on the capacitor bank. One for each rail. The power supply is a dual mono setup.
I removed the bias resister so that the Aleph runs wide open, which I had to add a fan to the heat sinks to keep it at about 55 to 60 degrees Celsius on the heat sinks. In the future, I would use twice as many heat sinks to keep it fanless.
I used the Aleph 5 feedback resister values and still added less feedback, since my horn speakers do not seem to need a lot of damping factor or control.
The high bias seemed to give it a lot of spaciousness. The other thing I liked from this previous thread was non polar capacitors for crossover networks. I replaced all 3 220UF capacitors in my MikeW Aleph boards, giving it a much more detailed and spacious sound compared to the electrolytics for some reason. I have not bypassed those yet. That will be another experiment down the road.
As mentioned already, I replaced the IRF9610's with the ZVP3310A Zetex mosfets. I found the ZVP3310A added a lot of extra detail compared to the IRF9610's. It was quite amazing at how much a difference it makes changing the input mosfets. I left the 10K ohm input resistance figuring it would have a lot less distortion in the upper frequencies, which hearing is believing. I know Nelson raised his Zen Version 4 to 47.5K ohm, but I felt lower would still give lower distortion still in the upper frequencies Plus that was one less thing to match again to my left and right channels.
I also tediously matched all resister values to each amp so that both channels are the same practically on their values. I have a electronic store that allows me to measure my parts before buying the parts with no extra charge, other than my many hours of time doing that on my own.
I think that was not needed now, because of how much the mosfets can vary while they warm up throughout their range.
The lower ZVP3310A input capacitance seems to allow a lot more of the original signal to get through, without the higher capacitance of the IRF9610 rolling off the highs. There is a night and day difference on how clear instruments sound--closer to real life compared to the more clouded sound of the IRF9610.
If someone else wants to try the ZVP3310, make sure you realize two of the pins are in the wrong sequence compared to the IRF9610. I learned that the hard way.
The neat thing about these mods are that it would be compatible with all of the Alephs out there. So, if you need a more powerful Aleph go ahead with these mods and have a much nicer Aleph with more power if you are unfortunate to not own efficient speakers.
I have a smaller version I have not completed yet, but plan on trying the IRF510 instead of the IRFP240's in the output stage. I guess I would call it a "Super Mini Aleph" of about 5 or 6 watts for my compression horns. I should have 1/5 the capacitance of the mini Aleph, so should hear even more clarity in my horn set up.
I was surprised to hear my first amp (the Aleph 3) actually had 20 seats of additional depth over the well renown Krell. That is quite a feat!!! I have always read the Aleph series have less depth and or spaciousness than other amps, but not in my tweaked Aleph 3 it seems.
With our 30ish year old ears, my brother and I further found at least 30 percent more resolution in discerning instruments compared to the Krell. Guitar strings just plucked right out of the air as though you were sitting in front of a live performance. Voices came out of thin air it seemed. It felt like a veil had been lifted. The spaciousness was truly a 3D holographic sound projection of the concert.
What was so surprising as Mark previously mentioned was even with all of this extra detail, the Aleph 3 still somehow sounded a lot smoother than the Krell. There was no hint of harshness with all of that extra detail.
I would have to let everyone chime in on their own opinions as to what they thought, because frankly the builders of the amps present would naturally favor their own creations.
The Krell sounded nice by itself and so did the Aleph 3. It was only when comparing them directly side by side that I noticed such a great difference.
The Krell really was a nice amp with very excellent bass. Both of these amps would work great bi amping. I would use the Aleph 3 for the highs and the Krell for the lows so that you could have the best of what both these amps excel at. Spaciousness and depth and super detail from the Aleph and dynamic bass from the Krell.
This shoot out is still not over yet. I still have some more mods to try out for the next time.
Mods never seem to end with my high end audio quest
Zvp3310.....
The use of this device sounds very interesting - but I was under the - obvious false - impression, that the outputstage needed more drive, thus the larger 9610 device ?? But on hte other hand, the 3310 is driving a IRFP240 in my zen V4 so why not here.....
I assume that proper matching of the 3310's is nesseceary ?
Cheers !
Buhl
The use of this device sounds very interesting - but I was under the - obvious false - impression, that the outputstage needed more drive, thus the larger 9610 device ?? But on hte other hand, the 3310 is driving a IRFP240 in my zen V4 so why not here.....
I assume that proper matching of the 3310's is nesseceary ?
Cheers !
Buhl
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