Why don't you design your own? This is DIYaudio.com...
You could design an input buffer around your preferred op amp...
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Two "must buy" articles, in my opinion, are Samuel Groner's Low Noise Pre-Amplifier (just for the noise analysis) and R Marsh's Headphone Amp. But I am sure there are others that are well worth it depending on your interests. But the two back-issue articles Bruno wrote for LA are available on his website. Certainly the G word article is:
http://www.hypex.nl/docs/papers/The G Word.pdf
The typology for the balanced volume controller will be familiar to anyone who has read the application hints section of the NC500 data sheet and noted the recommended buffer design.
Worth a read also:
http://www.hypex.nl/docs/appnotes/pin1_appnote.pdf
http://www.hypex.nl/docs/papers/The G Word.pdf
The typology for the balanced volume controller will be familiar to anyone who has read the application hints section of the NC500 data sheet and noted the recommended buffer design.
Worth a read also:
http://www.hypex.nl/docs/appnotes/pin1_appnote.pdf
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Thanks SGK
Been reading the Hypex link and find this quite amusing (RCA cables) commentary by Bruno
"There is a reason for the sprawling cottage industry that audiophile cables have spawned. Unbalanced connections affect the sound quite strongly for reasons that by now should be quite obvious. The whole idea of having one of the actual signal wires also do the dirty work of shunting equalizing currents away is barmy. To then try and solve the problem by eliminating those currents is bone-headed. To try and molly- coddle the sonic defects this causes by making outlandish cables is madness. The RCA connector and all it stands for should be banned by law"!
Been reading the Hypex link and find this quite amusing (RCA cables) commentary by Bruno
"There is a reason for the sprawling cottage industry that audiophile cables have spawned. Unbalanced connections affect the sound quite strongly for reasons that by now should be quite obvious. The whole idea of having one of the actual signal wires also do the dirty work of shunting equalizing currents away is barmy. To then try and solve the problem by eliminating those currents is bone-headed. To try and molly- coddle the sonic defects this causes by making outlandish cables is madness. The RCA connector and all it stands for should be banned by law"!
Yes it's a shame that different people have different tastes in sound. Too bad we weren't all androids with hearing on par with the finest measurement mic's.
And I totally agree with Bruno on that one. But ask a real audiophile, and he (invariably a he) will tell you that balanced connections and XLR connectors belong in the pro audio world, and the people in the pro audio world don't know anything about *real* hi-fi... 🙂
Which is why I believe in making gear as neutral as possible, and then giving people tools to shape the sound to whatever they want. I guess I am in a minority wanting to hear a sound that is as close as possible to what the studio/mastering engineer heard in the monitoring speakers...
Quite the opposite actually. We demand balanced interconnects even when they're unlikely to be better standalone than unbalanced.
The more powerful point Bruno is making is not so much balanced vs unbalanced interconnects, but rather completely removing the signal ground reference from typologies. Having spent a good deal of time lately designing a balanced input board to interface with a very high quality amp which has an inherently single-ended IPS, I have a good deal of sympathy for his view.
My Theta DAC only has balanced connections.
Attachments
Indeed but you can have balanced connections in single-ended typologies that use the ground reference. Cart. Horse.
Indeed single-ended amplifier typologies remain the "norm" and necessitate star ground antics. One can still build an extraordinarily good amp with these hurdles however.
Now, Colmo how's your input buffer coming along?
It's something I'd love to do as a project but I need to finish current builds first. By then you will be done!
It's something I'd love to do as a project but I need to finish current builds first. By then you will be done!
Good luck getting everyone to do that. People will always judge stand alone amps by how they sound in conjunction with everything else in their system. If it's a complete integrated system from start to finish all in 1 package it's a different story.
Indeed. Which leads to a certain degree of lock-in - when upgrading one piece of the system, it again has to "fit in" with the rest of the system. Again, the pro audio world is more of a "mix and match" world, out of necessity.
...and they may also judge your All-in-One by the Loudspeakers they use it with (and room responses)
We will never be happy ;-)
Well then you better not have anything more transparent / ideal than "hen", as we say in sweden, hen being a combo of he and she (han / hon) ... 🙂
//
I'm with Julf on this one, as is Bruno in the design philosophy.
As it has already been pointed out, the design concept of the NC500 is to be so neutrally transparent. As mentioned in the design notes and elaborated at length in this thread 🙂, one can then tweak any colouring as part of the input buffering. However, even then, you still have no real control over the external interfacing hardware and what sound envelope they might bring.
Looking at the whole chain:
[Source] => [DAC] => [Preamp] => [[Buffer]+[NC500]] => [Speaker]
There are many areas where colouring can be applied. And that's before you even start talking about personal preferences. Oh and I didn't mention interconnects or speaker cabling either. Let's leave that out for now!
I for one prefer a rather bright, revealing sound. And for that, I love the transparency of the NC500 and the very simplistic, basic LM4562 buffer adapter Hypex make. I've replicated it myself in my testing and found it interesting comparing to the NC400 where the buffering is already built into the module (I can't remember off the top of my head what the circuit for the NC400 is). You could also say that simple ~= better in that the lower number of components you add, particularly active ones. But my testing for the moment is doubly subjective: (1) I'm using my ears and (2) my personal preferences can distort perceived quality of sound. One day I'll invest in a proper analyser which won't throw in its personal opinion on the measurements!
Again, Bruno / Hypex point this out in the datasheet when looking at truly differential opamps like the LME49724 interfaced with a DAC.
Less is more. 🙂