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Buffalo II

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#1,283
For insight into speaker design, I'm trying to get a concrete idea of the nature of Tridents' beneficial effects on B2 performance. Any ideas? Has anybody looked at waveforms? I would be really curious to see (or read about) a closeup of the leading corner of a 3kHz to 5kHz square wave looking for any differences with vs. without Tridents. My ears tell me they should be obviously different but who knows, it could just be a perceptual trick. I'd be curious about other frequencies as well. Anybody done anything like that or able to get that info without much trouble? TIA! [...my ferrites are long gone]

Frank
 
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#1,286
Speaking of tube stages, is it a viable option to try for current mode or do tubes equate to voltage mode by default seeing as how current mode requires a very low input impedance?

Follow-up question: Is voltage mode actually a bad thing? So what if the THD drops a little?

Do we have any successful BII builds with tube I/V stages?
 
#1,291
Well, I've finally got my DAC together enough to make some noise. No nice enclosure yet, just everything mounted to the bottom plate to make sure it all works. Output stage is a Legato 2 with the Supertex TP0604 triples, OSCON's at C15 and C16, and Panasonic ECHU SMD caps (2.2nF comp, 3.3nF filter), hot running resistors up off of the pcb just a bit. Other than that it's basically stock. My system is single ended right now so I use the onboard balanced to SE converter. Input is a 75 ohm Amphenol BNC connector and 1.5 meter digital cable I purchased from Blue Jeans Cable. Buffalo is powered by a Placid, which I modified to accept a huge Nichicon KG 3300uF cap, OSCON at C5, and I built a little bridge rectifier out of 11DQ10 schottky's to replace the stock one. It shunts about 80mA or so. Legato is powered by a Salas shunt from the old black Hypnotize DCB1 group buy, I cut off the buffer section with a dremel and it's mounted in real close to the Legato. I set the outputs for +15V, -13.5V. Calculated to shunt about 150mA or so (each side), but I need to measure it sometime to see what it actually is. The Salas shunt also has the 11DQ10's, Nichicon KG's (4700uF), ELNA Silmic 2's, etc. so it's pretty nice too. The shunt supplies are bolted to the bottom plate (.19" aluminum) through the transistors. A 12" by 17" expanse of thick aluminum makes a pretty good heatsink. The transformer is an R-Core with 4 secondaries (doubled up a pair of the 9VAC's to feed the Placid). The electrostatic shield is a nice feature of these so that's connected to the AC ground line.

The sound? Well, I now understand why these sell out in 2 minutes. I don't have any other "quality" sources to compare it to, but this thing is really good. I guess this is where I am supposed to spew a bunch of audiophool babble, but I'll just say it gets me much more involved and interested in the music, everything is just more "alive". It did sound rough at first right out of the gate with music I'm really familiar with, grainy and closed in, kinda like a less punchy version of my Bluray player. But it has really come to life with a few days of run-in. I hope to build an amplifier with balanced inputs to get the most out of it one of these days.
 
#1,299
Thanks Russ. And thanks for allowing DIY'ers like myself the chance to build and enjoy a high caliber DAC like this. And to think it gets better, Tridents, duel mono, separate transformers for analog and digital, going direct in with the upcoming (no caps!) Legato 3 to balanced amp... Wow!

I want to mention the mods and changes I made are in no way necessary, the kits as received from Twisted Pear, are fantastic. The Salas shunt pcb I already had, just collecting dust. Component changes just my own personal touch or ideas gleemed from the forums, a dare to be different DIY thing...
 
#1,300
Hi guys I'm currently spec'ing up a dual mono buffalo system, just not sure which output boards to go for. Do I need 2 Ivy's?

It'll be going into a Shadow Hills Equinox summing amp so I don't require any volume control or pre-amp facilities in the DAC unit.

Thanks for any input to help a noob!

Cheers
ost_
 
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