I hope you guys report on how it sounds. There's not just a lot out there about t-2022 based amps. In fact, my review remains one of the longer ones out there. Chancelucky: Hlly t-90 (cheap class D amp with actual power)
Don´t think mine will be that quick, I´m in Spain and the post from China/Hong Kong generally takes a month or so. Still I´m looking forward to it.
Just getting back into "HIFI" after a lot of years away. I can´t run to big budget stuff and I have been led thorough forums like these to the Tripath chip amps. I am currently enjoying the little TA2024 chip amp I just got, hoping the Tamp 90 is a stronger version of that and I´ll be well happy. Got some reasonably sensitive (93db) mission floor standing speakers from way back that still sound good even with the little chip amp but I´m wanting a bit more grunt.
Really noticing the short comings of MP3´s ( in direct comparison to the CD) so I´ve started re-ripping all my music to Flac,. I use a great frontend ( Album Player) on my touch screen Jukebox This amp will allow me to use the pc to control volume etc. From there I will see where I go regards DAC´s and optical connections.
Are there any issues with leaving one of these amps on a highish volume and adjusting the input level ie from my PC?
Just getting back into "HIFI" after a lot of years away. I can´t run to big budget stuff and I have been led thorough forums like these to the Tripath chip amps. I am currently enjoying the little TA2024 chip amp I just got, hoping the Tamp 90 is a stronger version of that and I´ll be well happy. Got some reasonably sensitive (93db) mission floor standing speakers from way back that still sound good even with the little chip amp but I´m wanting a bit more grunt.
Really noticing the short comings of MP3´s ( in direct comparison to the CD) so I´ve started re-ripping all my music to Flac,. I use a great frontend ( Album Player) on my touch screen Jukebox This amp will allow me to use the pc to control volume etc. From there I will see where I go regards DAC´s and optical connections.
Are there any issues with leaving one of these amps on a highish volume and adjusting the input level ie from my PC?
Well waht would you know the postal service has surpassed itself. In almost exactly 2weeks from payment my Tamp 90 had arrived. For me here in Spain,This is unheard of a very good service. Tracking was well updated all the way.
On opening the package I was pleased to see the nice solid quality of my new toy. The AC lead was the first thing I noticed as it is quite chunky and not the weedy thing I was expecting from other posts.
Now just off to secrete myself in my audio room and give it a whirl. From what I´ve read I shall take down notes of my initial feelings/impressions to compare sometime in the future after it has run in some. Perhaps my ears will learn a bit more too.
If all the talk of these amps are correct I should be in for something that I haven´t heard before and for someone with my meagre budget shouldn´t be doing so now. Isn´t it stange the level of expectation from one to another.
I will update my post in a day or two, if anyone is interested in a budget/newcomers impressions.
Now where´s that old roll of bell wire?
On opening the package I was pleased to see the nice solid quality of my new toy. The AC lead was the first thing I noticed as it is quite chunky and not the weedy thing I was expecting from other posts.
Now just off to secrete myself in my audio room and give it a whirl. From what I´ve read I shall take down notes of my initial feelings/impressions to compare sometime in the future after it has run in some. Perhaps my ears will learn a bit more too.
If all the talk of these amps are correct I should be in for something that I haven´t heard before and for someone with my meagre budget shouldn´t be doing so now. Isn´t it stange the level of expectation from one to another.
I will update my post in a day or two, if anyone is interested in a budget/newcomers impressions.
Now where´s that old roll of bell wire?
I received my v2.3 TAMP-90 a few days ago. Very easy to listen to right out of the box. Small amount of hiss and hum is audible, but I can probably eliminate the hum by using foil-shielded coaxial cable to connect RCA jacks to circuit board (the stock unshielded wire passes close to the power transformer)
Based on other comments that I've read, I was expecting the sonics to be kind of dark and bass-heavy, but so far, that hasn't been my experience.
It must be emitting too much RFI, because as soon as I power up the amp, I lose my HD Radio reception. I've improved the grounding to the top and bottom halves of the case, and that seems to have helped, but there's still more work to be done. As delivered from the factory, a ring terminal is simply bolted to the anodized chassis, and I was seeing about 0.56 ohms resistance in that connection.
I also plan on examining the PCB and comparing to Tripath's reference circuit, particularly with regards to the 0.01uf decoupling capacitors, star grounding, and high-speed diodes used to tame overshoot.
1 kHz square wave, stock amp:
10 kHz:
20 kHz:
My small case-grounding mod:
Based on other comments that I've read, I was expecting the sonics to be kind of dark and bass-heavy, but so far, that hasn't been my experience.
It must be emitting too much RFI, because as soon as I power up the amp, I lose my HD Radio reception. I've improved the grounding to the top and bottom halves of the case, and that seems to have helped, but there's still more work to be done. As delivered from the factory, a ring terminal is simply bolted to the anodized chassis, and I was seeing about 0.56 ohms resistance in that connection.
I also plan on examining the PCB and comparing to Tripath's reference circuit, particularly with regards to the 0.01uf decoupling capacitors, star grounding, and high-speed diodes used to tame overshoot.
1 kHz square wave, stock amp:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
10 kHz:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
20 kHz:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
My small case-grounding mod:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
HI Guys,
The amp is super silent, no hiss/hum or anything else, when my CD source is playing it drops so silent during track changes you would think it is turning off.
A few hours in and I´m in a pickle with this amp. I really want to love it but I have the overwhelming first impression that there is too much sibilance on speech,symbols etc. Vocals are very upfront and I like that but when they are on their own all I can focus on is the sibilance, When a drummer gets busy with his symbols they all just run into each other and it becomes too frantic, while I realize this is a natural thing and some should be accepted I think this particular amp I have is overdoing it & is so distracting that it takes away from the otherwise very nice quality sound.
I turned it off after a while because of this started again with speaker placement to try and bring the bottom end more to the front. I deffinately need more time.
I have been using a very cheap ($15) little Tamp 2024 for a few weeks now and it is so clean and almost loud enough, the only problem I have is I find I turn it up to look for the strength in the bass when I want the bottom end filling out, but it is just not there but it has no where near the amount of sibilance that the T90 has .
I really hope I find a solution to this problem because the rest of the sound is very good I just can´t get to it for this sibilance problem.
Perhaps I have got a bad version of this amp, I was concerned about the white noise reports of the early versions of this amp but it is silent , I wasn´t expecting this sibilance thing.
I´ll work with it over the weekend and report back.
mfong do you have any suggestions about this? In your report you particularly mention the lack of sibilance in the amp you use. I´m jealous.
I love the extra power the bottom end is nice and filled out
The amp is super silent, no hiss/hum or anything else, when my CD source is playing it drops so silent during track changes you would think it is turning off.
A few hours in and I´m in a pickle with this amp. I really want to love it but I have the overwhelming first impression that there is too much sibilance on speech,symbols etc. Vocals are very upfront and I like that but when they are on their own all I can focus on is the sibilance, When a drummer gets busy with his symbols they all just run into each other and it becomes too frantic, while I realize this is a natural thing and some should be accepted I think this particular amp I have is overdoing it & is so distracting that it takes away from the otherwise very nice quality sound.
I turned it off after a while because of this started again with speaker placement to try and bring the bottom end more to the front. I deffinately need more time.
I have been using a very cheap ($15) little Tamp 2024 for a few weeks now and it is so clean and almost loud enough, the only problem I have is I find I turn it up to look for the strength in the bass when I want the bottom end filling out, but it is just not there but it has no where near the amount of sibilance that the T90 has .
I really hope I find a solution to this problem because the rest of the sound is very good I just can´t get to it for this sibilance problem.
Perhaps I have got a bad version of this amp, I was concerned about the white noise reports of the early versions of this amp but it is silent , I wasn´t expecting this sibilance thing.
I´ll work with it over the weekend and report back.
mfong do you have any suggestions about this? In your report you particularly mention the lack of sibilance in the amp you use. I´m jealous.
I love the extra power the bottom end is nice and filled out
Interesting.
Could be our ears just being different and our systems being very different.
I don't always trust my own active listening impressions. As I mentioned, the most telling thing is not to pay that much attention over time then ask yourself how much you've been listening and what you've been listening to.
Male spoken voice is traditionally one of the big tests for sibilance. One thing I noticed is that we watched an awful lot of movies with the Hlly in the system. (fwiw, our DVD player is very cheap and I'm not playing it through an outside DAC).
It could also be break-in or a difference between the Mark 2 and the Mark 3, though if it's that extreme, I would assume that Hlly would have caught it.
One other possibility is that it could be revealing a crossover issue in your speakers. At least when I used to do more of the diy speaker thing, I used to have a very hard time with sibilant voices. Because of the I did this it has to be great bias, it always took me a while to figure it out. I usually realized it when I kept turning the volume down or just stopped listening altogether.
As I said, it's quite possible that we just hear differently. I'll try listening some to my t-90 in the next couple days and see what I hear.
Could be our ears just being different and our systems being very different.
I don't always trust my own active listening impressions. As I mentioned, the most telling thing is not to pay that much attention over time then ask yourself how much you've been listening and what you've been listening to.
Male spoken voice is traditionally one of the big tests for sibilance. One thing I noticed is that we watched an awful lot of movies with the Hlly in the system. (fwiw, our DVD player is very cheap and I'm not playing it through an outside DAC).
It could also be break-in or a difference between the Mark 2 and the Mark 3, though if it's that extreme, I would assume that Hlly would have caught it.
One other possibility is that it could be revealing a crossover issue in your speakers. At least when I used to do more of the diy speaker thing, I used to have a very hard time with sibilant voices. Because of the I did this it has to be great bias, it always took me a while to figure it out. I usually realized it when I kept turning the volume down or just stopped listening altogether.
As I said, it's quite possible that we just hear differently. I'll try listening some to my t-90 in the next couple days and see what I hear.
My only 2024-based amp experience to date is with the current Dayton (Sonic Impact), which I've kept stock except to swap out the 0.33uf ceramic coupling caps with 4.7uf Black Gates, and the 100uf power supply cap with 2200uf Nichicon Muse (nothing magical about those values, I just happened to have them on hand). I left the high frequency filters alone. That amp actually sounds darker to me than the T90. Surprisingly, it also looks better on the oscilloscope! Less of an overshoot when reproducing square waves, better filtering of the high frequency hash, better-behaved at 20 khz.
My goal with the T90 is to make it behave more like the Dayton, only with a lot more power.
My goal with the T90 is to make it behave more like the Dayton, only with a lot more power.
I've been doing more exploring, and so far as I can see, the circuit is mostly the same as shown in Tripath's TA2022 datasheet with a few exceptions:
Input coupling capacitors are 2.2uf not 3.3, though if I've calculated this correctly, that's no problem at all as far as bass response is concerned, as it gives us an Fc of 2.41 Hz.
HLLY isn't using the TA2022's built-in VN10 supply, rather, they've got an LM317 voltage regulator hanging off the main power supply to do the deed. This is Tripath-approved practice.
Feedback capacitors have been omitted, though there are pads to accommodate them. Per Tripath's data sheet:
Suggested values are 390pf for one channel and 560pf for the other. They go in the vacant spots designated as C33 and C34 on the underside of the circuit board. I'll try to pick up the parts tomorrow. Seems odd that they'd leave these out when everything else looks pretty well done..?
Input coupling capacitors are 2.2uf not 3.3, though if I've calculated this correctly, that's no problem at all as far as bass response is concerned, as it gives us an Fc of 2.41 Hz.
HLLY isn't using the TA2022's built-in VN10 supply, rather, they've got an LM317 voltage regulator hanging off the main power supply to do the deed. This is Tripath-approved practice.
Feedback capacitors have been omitted, though there are pads to accommodate them. Per Tripath's data sheet:
Suggested values are 390pf for one channel and 560pf for the other. They go in the vacant spots designated as C33 and C34 on the underside of the circuit board. I'll try to pick up the parts tomorrow. Seems odd that they'd leave these out when everything else looks pretty well done..?
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
I think I've reached a stopping point with the v2.3 board.
Here's what a 10khz square wave looked like played through the stock amp:
I am not an expert with these things by any means, but I saw areas I wanted to improve. For one thing, there's the big spike at the leading edge of the waves, and the way it rings a bit. Also the wave seems thick with ultrasonics.
Out of curiousity, I added the "missing" 390pf and 560 pf feedback capacitors, and this is what resulted:
Yuck, no wonder they omitted them!! I don't know, maybe the overshoot is controlled (slightly) better, but any advantage is completely swamped by increased noise, therefore avoid this mod!
I plan on simply replacing the HLLY circuit board with an AMP5 module from 41Hz Audio. But if HLLY decides to offer the v3.0 circuit board as an upgrade item, that might be more convenient as it will likely be a drop-in replacement.
Here's what a 10khz square wave looked like played through the stock amp:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
I am not an expert with these things by any means, but I saw areas I wanted to improve. For one thing, there's the big spike at the leading edge of the waves, and the way it rings a bit. Also the wave seems thick with ultrasonics.
Out of curiousity, I added the "missing" 390pf and 560 pf feedback capacitors, and this is what resulted:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Yuck, no wonder they omitted them!! I don't know, maybe the overshoot is controlled (slightly) better, but any advantage is completely swamped by increased noise, therefore avoid this mod!
I plan on simply replacing the HLLY circuit board with an AMP5 module from 41Hz Audio. But if HLLY decides to offer the v3.0 circuit board as an upgrade item, that might be more convenient as it will likely be a drop-in replacement.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Here's the announcement from David at HLLY:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/147589-hlly-tamp-90-ta2022-chip-true-pearl-4.html
My guess is that they want to clear out the existing stock of v2.3 amps before they put v3.0 into production.
4season,
I thought the 2.3 was the version 3.
I'm wondering if the issues with passing a square wave might account for my sense that my hlly t-90 wasn't great with transients. Things tended to sound rounded, though I still liked the sound in general.
I've since preferred the 2050 and surprisingly Arjen's 2020 Mk III to the Hlly t-90.
I did spend a fair amount of time re-listening to the t-90 and did not consider the sibilants to be a problem. Could just be my ears though.
I thought the 2.3 was the version 3.
I'm wondering if the issues with passing a square wave might account for my sense that my hlly t-90 wasn't great with transients. Things tended to sound rounded, though I still liked the sound in general.
I've since preferred the 2050 and surprisingly Arjen's 2020 Mk III to the Hlly t-90.
I did spend a fair amount of time re-listening to the t-90 and did not consider the sibilants to be a problem. Could just be my ears though.
David at HLLY mentioned that V3 would have a gold-plated circuit board, and what I'm seeing doesn't seem to match that description unless the gold is totally hidden underneath the solder mask. But my amplifier did not come directly from China: It was shipped from HLLY's affiliate in the USA, so it's possible that I have an older version than you do.
Hi My correspondence from them was that mine (shipped 28 feb)would be the version 3, just looked at it and it states on the board that it is V2.5 , don´t know what the earlier versions say ?
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_ZboJ1Xb7gfM/S551fN7nbAI/AAAAAAAAAGc/Jh-uz1Ut99U/amp 4 web.jpg
After listening lots more I must say that things seem to be less annoying and I feel that perhaps I am being a bit over critical. I haven´t been listening this close to my hifi gear for years and when I returned to my amp a couple of days after my first day I was pleased that things seemed worse in my mind than in reality. Isn´t it strange how you can think things worse in your head? Although I wrote my first impressions honestly and immediately. The sibilance seems to have an exact strike and just hangs on a bit longer than I feel is natural as if its a reverb/extension of the original. obviously all very short in time but I find myself listening for it.
I didn´t think something like changeing an amp over could upset room acoustics so much, I ended up revising my speakers onto a diferent wall and pushing them back closer to it than before, perhaps the previous amps couldn´t generate the reverb that I was chasing away?
I still thing it is a bit sibilant but this may be partly due to the fact that these frequencies are now freed up more with this amp and my more recent amps have all had tone controls and in general I probably had things a bit numbed off in the top end. The Tamp is straight off my CD source with no option of tonal control.
This and having a largish MP3 library that definitely sound different to the CD´s.
I am by no means qualified to comment/compare this amp to "Hi end" hifi gear so please give me a bit of leaway if I use odd terms to explain myself here.
I am still evaluating my Tamp and enjoying it in general if just a bit too sibilant. It has very different handling of music than my previous B&O 5500 system.
I have yet to try it with flac music from my PC, with this I could dip the upper frequency a little to perhaps make things more palatable.
PS lots of day to day amps that we all have in TV´s etc are much worse than this.
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_ZboJ1Xb7gfM/S551fN7nbAI/AAAAAAAAAGc/Jh-uz1Ut99U/amp 4 web.jpg
After listening lots more I must say that things seem to be less annoying and I feel that perhaps I am being a bit over critical. I haven´t been listening this close to my hifi gear for years and when I returned to my amp a couple of days after my first day I was pleased that things seemed worse in my mind than in reality. Isn´t it strange how you can think things worse in your head? Although I wrote my first impressions honestly and immediately. The sibilance seems to have an exact strike and just hangs on a bit longer than I feel is natural as if its a reverb/extension of the original. obviously all very short in time but I find myself listening for it.
I didn´t think something like changeing an amp over could upset room acoustics so much, I ended up revising my speakers onto a diferent wall and pushing them back closer to it than before, perhaps the previous amps couldn´t generate the reverb that I was chasing away?
I still thing it is a bit sibilant but this may be partly due to the fact that these frequencies are now freed up more with this amp and my more recent amps have all had tone controls and in general I probably had things a bit numbed off in the top end. The Tamp is straight off my CD source with no option of tonal control.
This and having a largish MP3 library that definitely sound different to the CD´s.
I am by no means qualified to comment/compare this amp to "Hi end" hifi gear so please give me a bit of leaway if I use odd terms to explain myself here.
I am still evaluating my Tamp and enjoying it in general if just a bit too sibilant. It has very different handling of music than my previous B&O 5500 system.
I have yet to try it with flac music from my PC, with this I could dip the upper frequency a little to perhaps make things more palatable.
PS lots of day to day amps that we all have in TV´s etc are much worse than this.
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