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Analogue Productions Living Stereo at Music Direct
Sorry about that .... Best thing is to have a listen to the system of someone who's worked at getting digital sounding good - a simple setup, source from music server, using amps with plenty of headroom is probably the best chance of hearing it right ...
LOL,
I have on more occasions than you could shake a stick at and they usually have an analog rig that betters it . Frank, maybe it is you who should get out and hear a good digital rig then we can move ahead on this.
I also have a few of Dave Wilsons and Prof Johnson's CD's that do a pretty good job, lots of dynamics,great recordings with the ease and comfort of having a remote control , so what ...
Dave Wilson still thinks his R/R sounds better , it's not that the digital is bad or not listenable , it just hasn't bettered where we were or are with analog, careful to note, phono pre-amps and TT's are better today than they were when digital waltz on the scene 3 decades ago, such is the task at hand ...
I take it that means listening to highly expensive, ambitious kit, that's relatively poor sounding for the money. No thanks, "I have on more occasions than you could shake a stick at", nothing to be gained by repeating old mistakes ...Frank, maybe it is you who should get out and hear a good digital rig then we can move ahead on this.
No i mean get out and hear a good system , try it out yourself, you would be surprised to note how much better than u-tube and PC speakers digital can get ...
Seriously, there must be someone in Australia with a good system ...
PS: This guy is in Melbourne , talks a good talk ....
Front end: Aesthetix Romulus cdp, Oppo BDP-103AU (dvd) Amplification: Vitus SIA-025 Speakers: Magico S5's (titanium grey) IC's: Jorma Prime xlr (x2), Siltech Classic Anniversary rca's, Siltech Classic Anniversary HDMI (dvd) PC's: Jorma Prime (x3), Jorma Unity (x1), Vitus Andromeda (x1) SC's: Jorma Prime Vibration Management: Taoc ASR series racks with Finite Elemente Cerabase Classic feet, Taoc SCB-RS50G board, Stillpoints Ultra 5's, Ultra Bases, Ultra Minis & Ultra LPI's, Wally feet Power board: Acoustic Revive RTP-6 Ultimate Tweaks: Oyaide R1, WPC-Z, Acoustic Revive RGC-24, RR-777, King Rex PSU Mk2, RD-3, RIO-5II, Shunyata DFE V2
Seriously, there must be someone in Australia with a good system ...
PS: This guy is in Melbourne , talks a good talk ....
Front end: Aesthetix Romulus cdp, Oppo BDP-103AU (dvd) Amplification: Vitus SIA-025 Speakers: Magico S5's (titanium grey) IC's: Jorma Prime xlr (x2), Siltech Classic Anniversary rca's, Siltech Classic Anniversary HDMI (dvd) PC's: Jorma Prime (x3), Jorma Unity (x1), Vitus Andromeda (x1) SC's: Jorma Prime Vibration Management: Taoc ASR series racks with Finite Elemente Cerabase Classic feet, Taoc SCB-RS50G board, Stillpoints Ultra 5's, Ultra Bases, Ultra Minis & Ultra LPI's, Wally feet Power board: Acoustic Revive RTP-6 Ultimate Tweaks: Oyaide R1, WPC-Z, Acoustic Revive RGC-24, RR-777, King Rex PSU Mk2, RD-3, RIO-5II, Shunyata DFE V2
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The Melbourne gear should do a decent job: the cdp description makes a lot of the right noises, the amplification is good, from personal experience; Magico I've not experienced, but sounds like a 'take no prisoners' approach, similar to Wilson. IOW, could be special, or ear grindingly 'orrible, depending on the time of day ...
Ah, my eager beaver days are behind me, I'm afraid ... much easier to grab something from the shelf, nice and cheap, already got all the major bits in place - and sort it out.Better yet, build sumting, yeah thats a novel idea, build up sumting , start with the speakers and work your way backwards..
The only thing I would be interesting in doing, perhaps down the track - as mentioned before -, is get something together that will be able to hit 132dB peaks cleanly - a true, audiophile, PA system so to speak - that should scare a few neighbours, and some cocky hifi freaks ...
This is what a.wayne's talking about - Vitus SIA-025 integrated amp - Product Reviews & Personal Opinions (Moderated) - StereoNET Australia. Yes, the owner is talking about it producing music, rather than hifi noises, which is what one would hope for. The description of the Vitus 'sound' is merely describing what a good system should produce - and matches my impression of such a unit behaving itself properly, it doesn't intrude into the sound in an obvious way ...
Ah, my eager beaver days are behind me, I'm afraid ... much easier to grab something from the shelf, nice and cheap, already got all the major bits in place - and sort it out.
The only thing I would be interesting in doing, perhaps down the track - as mentioned before -, is get something together that will be able to hit 132dB peaks cleanly - a true, audiophile, PA system so to speak - that should scare a few neighbours, and some cocky hifi freaks ...
Get with Brax , afterall he has the best DAC in the world ......
It seems to me we are a little too diffused here. Let me make it clear:
1. A bad driver cannot be made into a great one by any XO, perhaps just a bit more tame,
2. A poorly designed XO can make a good driver perform way below its actual capabilities and turn a potentially great speaker into a mediocre one,
3. An XO can make a speaker a fairly easy load to drive, so even humble electronics can drive it well, and vice versa, a poor XO can turn a reasonable speaker into an unnecessarily hard load to drive,
4. A poorly designed XO will make it necessary to spend more on amplification as it will progressively require more and more robust amplification, and
5. For a speaker to be really great, its XO and drivers must be in a symbiotic relationship, i.e. matched to each other as well as reasonably possible so they operate as one.
In peril of becoming boisterous, I do believe that the key reason why my loudspeakers sound so good is that we managed to strike a reasonable balance between many contradicting factors and made the XO and driver marriage a very happy one.
That of course is my own belief, and the only proof I can offer is that of the six pairs of speakers in existence are, after 11 years, still owned by their original owners. Given that these folks dished out €4,000 (app. US$ 5,200) in 2001/2002 for amplification, obviously they are hardly needy and could easily afford other speakers, with famous names. And they are located in Belgium, France, Holland and Italy, countries with an abudant supply and loads of choice.
My only regret is that I couldn't let Bascom King audition one - he did ask for one if any were shipped to USA, but unfortunately, the company broke up before any could be sold there. Its market life span was just 2 months, when a motorcycling accident left one of the two partners paralyzed for life.
Frank,
A wise German taught me something I find to be very important - before you get down to it, you need to make up your mind as to what you are designing it for, commercial Hi-Fi or straight music.
If it's for commercial Hi-Fi, you need to get that distortion down at any cost and will need a spec sheet which is as brilliant as yu can make it.
If it's for playing music, you can throw the commerical spec sheet away and concentrate on what you feel is most important, without wasting time on what evetually turns out to be sales blurb and more often than not making purely economy orientated decisions.
Very roughly speaking, concentrate on such things as stability without too much NFB , do what you can to shorten its settling time as much as you can, and pay no great attention to large tranformer and PSU prices, pay what you need to pay for top class products. So long as your worst case, say working steady state into say 2 Ohms, has its THD below 0.1% and IM below say 0.05%, you're all right. It's nice to have a good voltage slew rate, where "good" is say 1 V/uS per every peak volt of output, but you also need to consider its current slew rate, especially if it's to work into lower load impedances.
Always remember that any amp is by necessity a set of compromises, and your job is to make it as small a set of compromises as you can. Or as happy a marriage as you can.
A wise German taught me something I find to be very important - before you get down to it, you need to make up your mind as to what you are designing it for, commercial Hi-Fi or straight music.
If it's for commercial Hi-Fi, you need to get that distortion down at any cost and will need a spec sheet which is as brilliant as yu can make it.
If it's for playing music, you can throw the commerical spec sheet away and concentrate on what you feel is most important, without wasting time on what evetually turns out to be sales blurb and more often than not making purely economy orientated decisions.
Very roughly speaking, concentrate on such things as stability without too much NFB , do what you can to shorten its settling time as much as you can, and pay no great attention to large tranformer and PSU prices, pay what you need to pay for top class products. So long as your worst case, say working steady state into say 2 Ohms, has its THD below 0.1% and IM below say 0.05%, you're all right. It's nice to have a good voltage slew rate, where "good" is say 1 V/uS per every peak volt of output, but you also need to consider its current slew rate, especially if it's to work into lower load impedances.
Always remember that any amp is by necessity a set of compromises, and your job is to make it as small a set of compromises as you can. Or as happy a marriage as you can.
Frankly, I had some trouble actually seeing what's on the picture, so I may have gotten something wrong.
The choices you made I think can be made a little differently with beneficial results. What you have shown is more or less what say Sansui was doing with their 9900 and 11000 models circa mid 70ies.
The first thing I'd do differently is the current gain stage. The topology you used yields relatively small distortion, but is somewhat notorious for just loving to oscillate. Also, it's not particularly fast, which becomes an issue in case you opt for "medium fast" (i.e. with Ft of 4-7 MHz) output devices.
I would have used emitter followers - this is the fastest topology we have, which is an issue with such devices (actually, with all devices, but these in particular). And I would have used an output triple topology, along the general lines of Bart Locanthi - meaning predriver, driver and output. This topology provides excellent speed and control, along with reduced output impedance, meaning you improve the damping factor. Lastly, because of added gain, this also offloads your VAS stage, as it requires less driving current.
To cut a long story short, before any specific comments can be made with any reason, I would like to know:
1. What should be the nominal power output of the amp?
2. What would be its supply rails?
3. Would you consider splitting the PSU lines for the input and VAS from those for the current gain stage?
4. What is the lowest impedance the amp is expected to work into on a steady state basis, and how much power is expected of it in short term peaks? This is crucial, as this will determine how much power should the output stage must be capable of delivering.
5. What should its input sensitivity be for the desired output power? The lower the sensitivity, the less gain, the less gain, the wider the bandwidth.
6. Is there a set budget for the project? Most important BEFORE we start planning what should this or that cost.
I'm sorry for answering your query with a set of questions, but these are very important considerations, and without knowing the answers, I don't think a truly meaningful answer is really possible.
Just one VERY PERSONAL note on the output devices. In theory, the faster the output devices, the better the amp. However, nothing goog comes without a price attached to it. Faster transistors will oscillate more easily than slower transistors, so the question of stability is somewhat amplified with faster devices.
My own very personal view is that "medium Ft" trnsistors from Motorola/ON Semi can, and very often do, sound actually better in a real world situation, sort of more organic, more top-to-bottom uniform than many much faster devices, with superior data sheets. Over the years, I have had several opportunities to have to change unavailable output devices with Motorola's offerings, which were far more modest data sheet wise, but in the end, the amp invariably ended up sounding warmer, grain free, organic sound than they originally had mostly with Japanese relatively fast output devices.
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