I received my two boards today also. 2mm thick and the matte black finish is done perfectly. The print too. Looks even better in real life and I prefer it to the shiny fast prototypes I had originally tested with. Obvious jump in quality of FR4 and copper thickness or plating and paint finish. Nice.
The micas I have them some time now, I think from the states. I bought an assortment of many values. I do not think I can find them any more.
The R12 are allen bradley ones and I I find something it would be easy to replace. I just used these pars because I had them. The other one I build will be full of dales.
The supplier I got them no linger has them for sale.
I really do not know if they are fakes or not but it seems difficult to fake this chip.
Yesterday I paid a long overdue visit to Salas in order to audition his DCG3 in his main system.
Our source was the Aune S16, fed by a tiny Intel PC. Most of the music files that we auditioned were stored locally in the PC.
Salas' valve preamp had given its place to the DCG3. The power amp was a modest Class-A SS design.
The speakers were Salas' own design, in their finalized form.
The system as a whole impressed with the way it was able to resolve every minute detail in the music. The presentation was effortless, even for the most demanding program material and did not cause fatigue even at the moderate SPLs that we were enjoying. The speakers positioned in Salas' living room measured virtually flat, from nearly the bottom of the audible spectrum up to frequencies that at least I can no longer hear.
From memory, I got the impression that the swap of the DCG3 in place of his valve preamp brought a more "transparent" and more lively result. It was definitely a step up in performance.
I also brought along my Fostex T50RP MK3 headphones, to listen to them on Salas' finished DCG3, like a "teaser" for what I could expect from my DCG3 once I'd finished building it. We were able to do a direct comparison to the Aune's built-in headphone amp. The difference in clarity, control and drive was more than evident, especially with my power-hungry inefficient 50Ω cans. The DCG3 is a very very competent headphones amp.
So now I am really looking forward to finishing my DCG3. Problem is I'm not sure what to do with it, seeing that it is both an excellent preamp and headphones amp..
PS. Computer audio is still a mess.. ASIO sounds different than ASIO2 or WASAPI and changing the length of the buffer on Foobar makes audible differences. Go f'in figure.
Our source was the Aune S16, fed by a tiny Intel PC. Most of the music files that we auditioned were stored locally in the PC.
Salas' valve preamp had given its place to the DCG3. The power amp was a modest Class-A SS design.
The speakers were Salas' own design, in their finalized form.
The system as a whole impressed with the way it was able to resolve every minute detail in the music. The presentation was effortless, even for the most demanding program material and did not cause fatigue even at the moderate SPLs that we were enjoying. The speakers positioned in Salas' living room measured virtually flat, from nearly the bottom of the audible spectrum up to frequencies that at least I can no longer hear.
From memory, I got the impression that the swap of the DCG3 in place of his valve preamp brought a more "transparent" and more lively result. It was definitely a step up in performance.
I also brought along my Fostex T50RP MK3 headphones, to listen to them on Salas' finished DCG3, like a "teaser" for what I could expect from my DCG3 once I'd finished building it. We were able to do a direct comparison to the Aune's built-in headphone amp. The difference in clarity, control and drive was more than evident, especially with my power-hungry inefficient 50Ω cans. The DCG3 is a very very competent headphones amp.
So now I am really looking forward to finishing my DCG3. Problem is I'm not sure what to do with it, seeing that it is both an excellent preamp and headphones amp..
PS. Computer audio is still a mess.. ASIO sounds different than ASIO2 or WASAPI and changing the length of the buffer on Foobar makes audible differences. Go f'in figure.
Sorry...I should have stated that I've been using a DCG3 kits BOM from Tea, so I assume he made a small mistake on the quantity of Cb and Cc caps.
I'll use your BOM from now on.
I appreciate your reply.
Typos happen. In mine C6,C7 should read 4x for instance. Also J3 in preamp's schematic is named Q5 on the actual board. But I have added that errata in post#1 for some time now.
Here is a photo of some values. Maybe they are from different manufactures.
Attachments
![IMG_20161230_183817[1].jpg](/community/data/attachments/530/530473-2c5f085e4476048564f121cd07c7c201.jpg)
Soon we will see builds playing i guess
While we are waiting, i donno if this Greek "wine?" is worth enjoying?
I found this Greek rare part, while clearing up at shop!
Jesper.
Retsina is the trademark folk wine of old Athens. Was everywhere in taverns and associated with music. Some are holding the opinion it is a wrongly underestimated unique wine, some can't stand it. Your mileage may vary.