The second you take them off the rack and install them into their working environment they'll have to break in all over again. Why not just leave the supply turned on 24/7?
Re: What music do you guys use ?
To me, complex passages are usually associated with big orchestral pieces. I often use this type of music to test an audio system.
One piece I use a lot is Brahms German Requiem. This is one of my favorite classical pieces. It always give me goose bumps. There's one particular recording I like very much for it's interpretation and warm sound. It's an older stereo recording re-issued by EMI in the Art series (7243 5 66903 2 5) with Otto Klemperer conducting. Although not the ultimate in resolution, it has a lot of information in it that not all systems are capable of retrieving. In the crescendos (track #2 - Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras), where most instruments and voices are mixed together the sound stage might become a big blob in the center and the voices on the sides will blur somehow with the rest of the orchestra. Some of it is related to this record limitation, but the CD has enough information to give you an ample and high sound stage. The voices should be defined well enough not to collapse in the center. The volume of sound should knock you down, it's really impressive. I've tried this track in many expensive audiophile systems that could not resolve these crescendos so well. When my system can't, I still have work to do...
Hope that helps,
ashok said:
To me, complex passages are usually associated with big orchestral pieces. I often use this type of music to test an audio system.
One piece I use a lot is Brahms German Requiem. This is one of my favorite classical pieces. It always give me goose bumps. There's one particular recording I like very much for it's interpretation and warm sound. It's an older stereo recording re-issued by EMI in the Art series (7243 5 66903 2 5) with Otto Klemperer conducting. Although not the ultimate in resolution, it has a lot of information in it that not all systems are capable of retrieving. In the crescendos (track #2 - Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras), where most instruments and voices are mixed together the sound stage might become a big blob in the center and the voices on the sides will blur somehow with the rest of the orchestra. Some of it is related to this record limitation, but the CD has enough information to give you an ample and high sound stage. The voices should be defined well enough not to collapse in the center. The volume of sound should knock you down, it's really impressive. I've tried this track in many expensive audiophile systems that could not resolve these crescendos so well. When my system can't, I still have work to do...
Hope that helps,
Hi,
I'm a metal head at heart so, that's not usually very telling on the performance of an amp. Neither is techno. I like to test mostly with acoustic pieces, female vocals, and everything else covering a wide variety of styles .... other than country. I did give the dixie chicks 10 seconds of play time at the request of a friend, but then I had to kick them both out.
I'm always on the hunt for good test pieces.
A real good one I found was the orchestral soundtrack to "The Last Samurai"..... very dynamic and complex, wicked bass in places too. Point being, no one recording or even style is enough to know for sure, best to have a variety that you like and are used to. Also, some changes are immediatly obvious, and don't require the fine attention.
Regards,
Chris
I'm a metal head at heart so, that's not usually very telling on the performance of an amp. Neither is techno. I like to test mostly with acoustic pieces, female vocals, and everything else covering a wide variety of styles .... other than country. I did give the dixie chicks 10 seconds of play time at the request of a friend, but then I had to kick them both out.
I'm always on the hunt for good test pieces.
A real good one I found was the orchestral soundtrack to "The Last Samurai"..... very dynamic and complex, wicked bass in places too. Point being, no one recording or even style is enough to know for sure, best to have a variety that you like and are used to. Also, some changes are immediatly obvious, and don't require the fine attention.
Regards,
Chris
classd4sure said:
Not really, once they have had some time to mature it does not take anywhere near as long as when they was new, I've used the cap rack mainly for my tube amp so not to waste the tubes life, they only took an hour to come on song once they had been removed
Also the standard BG's burn in a lot faster than the non polar ones
Did Bruno try BG's on the UCD board and reported to not like the results?
I know he likes the 10k ones in the main psu
I agree with classd4sure 100% about music...
i sell a lot of speakers (thats what i do for a living), and whenever i audition stuff, people bring their own music. but they bring like 2 classical pieces. its fine, they know them well, and the sound good and all. BUT, if your old speakers didnt have good dynamics, or good bass, or whatever, those recordings might not have mattered. but now, with a speaker that CAN do bass passages well, you need a recording that will show off that aspect of the speaker (or whatever piece of gear).
when i demo stuff for myself, or for others, i cover a good 10 genres. a single genre or cd isnt going to cover what a speaker can do. and sometimes, you need someone else to play something FOR you that you never knew existed, just so you can get an idea of what the speakers can do.
of course i say speakers, but it can be anything, amp, whatever. and like chris said, some of my favorite cds that i know by heart never get auditioned. i know them well, but they arent the greatest recordings, so they arent worth auditioning. most of the stuff i use for auditioning isnt stuff i normally listen to. but i know it well enough to use it for demos.
im selling my magnepan tympani 1D's because i just upgraded and i had a guy over to listen to them. he was using some small monitor speaker. he had a passage that he wanted to hear becasue it had good bass. no offense to him, but how does he know this passage has good bass? he listens to it on a small receiver with small mini monitors. i was auditioning my tympanis, BIAMPED, with dual velodyne DD-18's. after listening to it, he said it sounded weak. of course it did! its not a strong bass passage. so i played some stuff with large tympani drums on it, and he was of course impressed...
edit:
sorry, im venting a bit, i cant seem to sell these speakers. for $1k, what else can you get that will even come CLOSE to these things???
i sell a lot of speakers (thats what i do for a living), and whenever i audition stuff, people bring their own music. but they bring like 2 classical pieces. its fine, they know them well, and the sound good and all. BUT, if your old speakers didnt have good dynamics, or good bass, or whatever, those recordings might not have mattered. but now, with a speaker that CAN do bass passages well, you need a recording that will show off that aspect of the speaker (or whatever piece of gear).
when i demo stuff for myself, or for others, i cover a good 10 genres. a single genre or cd isnt going to cover what a speaker can do. and sometimes, you need someone else to play something FOR you that you never knew existed, just so you can get an idea of what the speakers can do.
of course i say speakers, but it can be anything, amp, whatever. and like chris said, some of my favorite cds that i know by heart never get auditioned. i know them well, but they arent the greatest recordings, so they arent worth auditioning. most of the stuff i use for auditioning isnt stuff i normally listen to. but i know it well enough to use it for demos.
im selling my magnepan tympani 1D's because i just upgraded and i had a guy over to listen to them. he was using some small monitor speaker. he had a passage that he wanted to hear becasue it had good bass. no offense to him, but how does he know this passage has good bass? he listens to it on a small receiver with small mini monitors. i was auditioning my tympanis, BIAMPED, with dual velodyne DD-18's. after listening to it, he said it sounded weak. of course it did! its not a strong bass passage. so i played some stuff with large tympani drums on it, and he was of course impressed...
edit:
sorry, im venting a bit, i cant seem to sell these speakers. for $1k, what else can you get that will even come CLOSE to these things???
I made my UCD amp grounding according to Hypex instructions
http://www.hypex.nl/docs/wiring.pdf (unbalanced)
I hear now clearly hum from each of 4 channels. Before i had traditional star grounding of ps ground and no any hum (rca:s were not grounded).
I have ps. connection attached and only rca jacket ground is now connected to chassis, ps. ground is floating. Chassis is not connected to safety earth.
I am disapointed
Did i something wrong?
http://www.hypex.nl/docs/wiring.pdf (unbalanced)
I hear now clearly hum from each of 4 channels. Before i had traditional star grounding of ps ground and no any hum (rca:s were not grounded).
I have ps. connection attached and only rca jacket ground is now connected to chassis, ps. ground is floating. Chassis is not connected to safety earth.
I am disapointed
Did i something wrong?
Attachments
classd4sure said:
I cannot connect chassis to safety earth because in my listening room there is no any. An Hypex also says in this document:
"When using RCA inputs do NOT connect chassis to safety earth to avoid ground loops. "
There was discussion in some thread where Bruno tells that "star ground sucks" but i do not remember details for this discussion.
classd4sure said:
I can hear same hum even when input of amp is shorted.
Source is connected into same outlet as the amp, as it was before (when i had this "sucking star ground"..)
And...
No, we won't agree here neither, but it is a good idea to comment what are we talking about when we say a given mod led to a given effect.
I, unfortunatelly, hear almost only classical music, the most difficult to perform, register and reproduce
I am seriously trying not to test the mods these days with specific CD's, but to listen in a relaxed way...not allways possible as you can imagine.
I use for dinamics and complex passages some of the CD's from the reissued "Living Stereo" collection from the late 50's!
Some aren't very clean but they sure are "living" and uncompressed.I tend to preferre analog recordings edited in 20 or 24 bits.
If a system doesn't sound good with rock, jazz or "girl and guitar" music, it has to be burnt
But "about tastes, there's nothing written" as they say around here.
It reminds me about a thread who examined different opamps for DAC's I/V. I followed with enormous interest the lectures of several experts, until some began to talk about "how good sounded the voice of Diana Krall" or "the voice of ***" I mean the other pretty girl with tinny, whispering voice...
It made me sick. It still does 😀 PasiP:
Sorry to hear that, man. I can't help because I know nothing about your caps, but can I suggest that you go back to the "star", enjoy your music for a while and heal thy soul
in that manner?Best of lucks...
Mauricio
PasiP,
check out my thread on the humming problem i had with my amps. ill see if i can find it and post it. i had a similar problem. i disregarded the hypex advice and took the advice of a fellow member on here. it worked great. with ear touching tweeter, i cannot hear a THING when they are on.
check out my thread on the humming problem i had with my amps. ill see if i can find it and post it. i had a similar problem. i disregarded the hypex advice and took the advice of a fellow member on here. it worked great. with ear touching tweeter, i cannot hear a THING when they are on.
Sorry for repeating myself (posted the question a while ago in this thread, was not clear enough).
I'd like to decrease the gain of UcD400 to 4.55 voltage gain.
I was reading a previous post and I got confused.
Here's the factory values given by J-P: A=1000, B=560, C=1800 and D=8200, in the formula (1+2*A/B)*D/C
If I remove the 560 ohm opamp resistor altogether (setting the opamp to unity gain buffer) would the overall voltage gain be set to 4.55 or am I missing something? (B would be infinite in this case).
Would I damage anything by doing so?
Thanks in advance.
I'd like to decrease the gain of UcD400 to 4.55 voltage gain.
I was reading a previous post and I got confused.
Here's the factory values given by J-P: A=1000, B=560, C=1800 and D=8200, in the formula (1+2*A/B)*D/C
If I remove the 560 ohm opamp resistor altogether (setting the opamp to unity gain buffer) would the overall voltage gain be set to 4.55 or am I missing something? (B would be infinite in this case).
Would I damage anything by doing so?
Thanks in advance.
cowanrg said:
To float the inputs? That's the only way it worked for me in unbalanced. Of course, I did have my little metal plate/chassis earth grounded, I just like that idea.
So, your source is not grounded, your chassis is not grounded, your supply caps common point is not grounded to chassis (other than through the module), your amps output ground connects to that supply common point, speaker outputs don't do anything silly like short to the chassis do they? they'll have to float from it.
With as few real grounds as you have it's hard to imagine where the loop is, got to be something silly.
I don't imagine there should be any hum at all with inputs shorted, or no inputs.
Keep us posted.
Lucpes,
Make sure you get a reply from either Bruno or JP on this one. My guess is no damage, and that would be the gain. I think you'll be hurting cmrr by doing it.
Regards,
Chris
Pasi P said:I made my UCD amp grounding according to Hypex instructions
http://www.hypex.nl/docs/wiring.pdf (unbalanced)
I hear now clearly hum from each of 4 channels. Before i had traditional star grounding of ps ground and no any hum (rca:s were not grounded).
I have ps. connection attached and only rca jacket ground is now connected to chassis, ps. ground is floating. Chassis is not connected to safety earth.
I am disapointed
Did i something wrong?
Pasi-
With some advice from classd4sure, I implemented the following grounding scheme:
Unbalanced (for now) inputs to the amplifier are via XLR connectors using an adapter cable. Shield and signal ground are tied together at the RCA (source) end. Pin 1 is connected to the chassis close to the XLR. Safety (mains) earth is connected to the chassis at the same point. Power supply ground is only connected to the chassis through the UCD module (no separate wire).
This might not be of much help to you since you don't have mains earth (???) available, but for me the result is eerily quiet.
-Bill
hiwi3 said:
What I think alot fail to realize is that it's about more than just hum. There's 20 ways to hook it up and not hear any hiss or hum, the key to great sound from it though is to reference the input properly, I think anyway.
Regards,
Chris
hiwi3 said:
Thank you for the tip. Maybe i some day change XLR:s to UCD.
Or maybe easier way is to return back to star ground. It has worked very well. Only reason to try this new grounding is because Bruno is against star grounding in UCD.
I also use XLR sockets for the input with XLR plug to phono with the -/ground joined at the phono plug.
Even trying lots of various grounding for the psu etc (Thanks again to Chris for the advice on that😉 ) my amp was dead silent every time.
The main difference I got from changing the earthing about was better sonics
Out of all the different amps I have the UCD is the quitest
Even trying lots of various grounding for the psu etc (Thanks again to Chris for the advice on that😉 ) my amp was dead silent every time.
The main difference I got from changing the earthing about was better sonics
Out of all the different amps I have the UCD is the quitest
Why did you change it?
Encouraging DIY'ers to build amps to double-insulated standards, as the Hypex document does, seems unwise to me, especially as no advice is offered on how to do this.
For the unbalanced situation I would: -
1. Connect the chassis to mains earth (for safety).
2. Do NOT connect mains earth to the Hypex 0V rail, unless it's the only connection in the system from signal 0V to mains earth.
2. Use an RCA phono that is insulated from the chassis, if I had to use a phono, but would prefer to use an XLR and use a phono-XLR interconnect, with the -ve and the screen joining at the phono end only to get maximum benefit from the differential input.
Ah! that answers my first question 😉
I don't understand this - can anyone point me to the reason why, it seems non-sensical!
Andy.
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