jkeny said:
Hi John,
you're right, there is not yet an answer but it is my fault. I'm still waiting for components from CWS, necessary to make an experiment that will answer the question. Let me do a brief extract of the facts.
Last hypothesis was that bertus coils sound better because of a better toroid core. So I ordered from CWS some molypermalloy core toroids that, as stated by more than a contributor of this thread, are undoubtely the best for this application.
The test would be to wind MPP in "bertus style" and traditional style. If it will be a difference, then is the winding style to influence sound, otherwise it is the core material used by bertus. The experiment is interesting because in both cases I'll have better coils 😀
Discussing, somebody suggested that copper foil coils would be, proper shielded, the best inductors for the output filter. So the comparison among coils will include this too.
The discussion about coils is arised comparing UCD180 and AMP5 with Tripath TA2022. Output filters are the weak part of Tripath amps. Tripath makes money selling thousands chips for low cost consumer market, and has low interest for the few chips sold for the many thousand dollars high end amplifiers like Bel Canto or Audio Research ones. So they never developed the research for the best sound for their amp: for a 30$ consumer thing the T-Amp sounds too well already!
Nonetheless, Tripath has something more than UCD in terms of information extracted from the source, even if it is more dirty and noisy (would be tube amps cleaner and less noisy?).
The research for better output filter coils for Tripath amps, would eliminate or reduce Tripath's weakness, so we all will have at home our Audio Research or Bel Canto Tripath based amp.
Thomas
Re: Test results of coils with T106-2 evenly winded
Thomas,
Can you remember which CDs you used for these listenings?
thomaseliot said:
Thomas,
Can you remember which CDs you used for these listenings?
Hi Thomas.
Did you have a chance to try the Mundorf foil coils yet?
Would be interesting to know before I'd run after Bertus coils.
\Klaus
Did you have a chance to try the Mundorf foil coils yet?
Would be interesting to know before I'd run after Bertus coils.
\Klaus
Molypermalloy core toroids arrived just yesterday. Nice, I get 11uH with only 13 turns with 16AWG wire: very easy to wind. With 1,06 inch OD toroid the windings are spaced almost 1mm from each other.
I have to prepare two sets: one evenly winded, the other with "back turns" like in Bert's coils. This night, maybe.
I have to prepare two sets: one evenly winded, the other with "back turns" like in Bert's coils. This night, maybe.
soundcheck said:
I recall Thomas had then on post #172 page 18. I'm interested in hearing about it as well.
The new MPP core coils are soldered and happily sounding now.
Well...
Great!
I must say many thanks to all people that made me discover these coils and helped me with the design.
It is very nice to discover on the first notes that something changed in better. The character of the sound is similar to Bert's (bertus) coils, clear and detailed, but one has the clear sensation of an overall enhancement of information.
Single sounds are more beautilful and balanced. This is evident with complex solo piano pieces. Now is playing Listz, very complex trascendental studies: each single note has its own resonances not confused nor cancelled by others. Again, more information.
This said, remains to experiment Bert's winding style. The coils I mounted are evenly winded, but I made them with only 13 turns (16AWG), so that each turn is at 0,5-1mm from others. And from last turn to the first there are 2 cm. This way I obtain the effect that Bert obtained with his pieces of rope.
But the same I made two coils with uneven turns (not yet tried):
I wait for Bert to have some hints.
Well...
Great!
I must say many thanks to all people that made me discover these coils and helped me with the design.
It is very nice to discover on the first notes that something changed in better. The character of the sound is similar to Bert's (bertus) coils, clear and detailed, but one has the clear sensation of an overall enhancement of information.
Single sounds are more beautilful and balanced. This is evident with complex solo piano pieces. Now is playing Listz, very complex trascendental studies: each single note has its own resonances not confused nor cancelled by others. Again, more information.
This said, remains to experiment Bert's winding style. The coils I mounted are evenly winded, but I made them with only 13 turns (16AWG), so that each turn is at 0,5-1mm from others. And from last turn to the first there are 2 cm. This way I obtain the effect that Bert obtained with his pieces of rope.
But the same I made two coils with uneven turns (not yet tried):
I wait for Bert to have some hints.
thomaseliot said:The new MPP core coils are soldered and happily sounding now.
Well...
Great!
I must say many thanks to all people that made me discover these coils and helped me with the design.
It is very nice to discover on the first notes that something changed in better. The character of the sound is similar to Bert's (bertus) coils, clear and detailed, but one has the clear sensation of an overall enhancement of information.
Single sounds are more beautilful and balanced. This is evident with complex solo piano pieces. Now is playing Listz, very complex trascendental studies: each single note has its own resonances not confused nor cancelled by others. Again, more information.
This said, remains to experiment Bert's winding style. The coils I mounted are evenly winded, but I made them with only 13 turns (16AWG), so that each turn is at 0,5-1mm from others. And from last turn to the first there are 2 cm. This way I obtain the effect that Bert obtained with his pieces of rope.
But the same I made two coils with uneven turns (not yet tried):
I wait for Bert to have some hints.
Would you say these are better than the UcD then?
In my system, and with classic music, yes. Tripath extracts more information.
I play music from hard disk with external Wolfson DAC and Fostex FE206. Maybe with less complex music, more powerful and less efficient speakers, in bigger rooms, would be different. There are too many UCD enthusiasts to generalize my experience.
Which driver in your enclosures? 🙂
I play music from hard disk with external Wolfson DAC and Fostex FE206. Maybe with less complex music, more powerful and less efficient speakers, in bigger rooms, would be different. There are too many UCD enthusiasts to generalize my experience.
Which driver in your enclosures? 🙂
thomaseliot said:
A modified TB 3 " titanium cone driver.
Edit: I like to technically figure out what part of a design actually effects sound, and see if there is a way to improve it. I think the coils of the class D are very critical, and really wonder what the UcD use as their coil and core material and length of wind. Foil type sonically seem to be very good if the winding is long, but now that you have only 13 loops, it might just be equally as good as foils.
Hi ThomasElliot.
Off-Topic:
Get yourself a Ramdisc!! at ramdisk.tk enterprise version.
It will outperform any other form of playback from PC.
Get yourself J.River MediaCenter, which is already far better than foobar.
Play your tracks from Ramdisc and J.River.
It'll take you 30minutes to install. Demos are all free of charge!
You won't believe you ears. I promise. 😀
Klaus
Off-Topic:
Get yourself a Ramdisc!! at ramdisk.tk enterprise version.
It will outperform any other form of playback from PC.
Get yourself J.River MediaCenter, which is already far better than foobar.
Play your tracks from Ramdisc and J.River.
It'll take you 30minutes to install. Demos are all free of charge!
You won't believe you ears. I promise. 😀
Klaus
Soundcheck,
I installed J River Mediacenter & played audio - in mp3 playback I still believe Foobar is sharper at the top end.
Couldn't get flac playback to work so no way of testing sound quality of lossless which is where you would expect to hear any player differences.
I mainly use a player called MP3toys which has a great interface & links to an external player (Foobar) if desired - automatically downloads Album Cover Art & Song Lyrics from the net.
John
I installed J River Mediacenter & played audio - in mp3 playback I still believe Foobar is sharper at the top end.
Couldn't get flac playback to work so no way of testing sound quality of lossless which is where you would expect to hear any player differences.
I mainly use a player called MP3toys which has a great interface & links to an external player (Foobar) if desired - automatically downloads Album Cover Art & Song Lyrics from the net.
John
Hi Klaus,
I'm a bit skilled with pc, so I built this from thermaltake:
It is the case only. I put inside an old PIV m/b with fan less CPU cooler, a fan less power supply and two Seagate 250Gb HD. The IR is customized to send Foobar commands, and volume commands to E-MU1212M sound card.
I don't use mediacenter software because I don't like the way they want to catalogue your music, have no support for .ape and .flac files, I don't own Mp3 files and, overall, they usually have no ASIO drivers.
Ramdisk is interesting.
Thomas
I'm a bit skilled with pc, so I built this from thermaltake:
It is the case only. I put inside an old PIV m/b with fan less CPU cooler, a fan less power supply and two Seagate 250Gb HD. The IR is customized to send Foobar commands, and volume commands to E-MU1212M sound card.
I don't use mediacenter software because I don't like the way they want to catalogue your music, have no support for .ape and .flac files, I don't own Mp3 files and, overall, they usually have no ASIO drivers.
Ramdisk is interesting.
Thomas
Many posts ago the comparison between UcD180ad and amp5 started. It seemed that the UCD was out of the box better than the amp5, but that the amp5 with the right coils bests the UCD?
Has the same effort been put into the UCD? I don't want to be thinking I made a mistake getting into UCD.
Not sure how this got sidetracked to Mediaplayers...
My two cents --- any musicplayer with ASIO output on Windows is good enough. I started using Winamp years ago. Then Windows Media Player. Then MediaMonkey. Then foobar. Then Windows MP. And finally full circle to Winamp5 since it supports asio.
And as far as formats... any lossless format works. Wave's lack of ID3 tag isnt important to me as I have my albums organized by directory. Although, I've been using .APE and now Windows Media Lossless.
Seems to me that FLAC is supported on a few portable players and has very good compression/decompression speed, but lags the others in ultimate compression ratio, but not enough to matter.
Has the same effort been put into the UCD? I don't want to be thinking I made a mistake getting into UCD.
Not sure how this got sidetracked to Mediaplayers...
My two cents --- any musicplayer with ASIO output on Windows is good enough. I started using Winamp years ago. Then Windows Media Player. Then MediaMonkey. Then foobar. Then Windows MP. And finally full circle to Winamp5 since it supports asio.
And as far as formats... any lossless format works. Wave's lack of ID3 tag isnt important to me as I have my albums organized by directory. Although, I've been using .APE and now Windows Media Lossless.
Seems to me that FLAC is supported on a few portable players and has very good compression/decompression speed, but lags the others in ultimate compression ratio, but not enough to matter.
Daveis said:
In the first comparison I stated that if UCD sounded more clean and quiet, Tripath had something more about the amount of "information", even if more noisy and less accurate.
As AMP5 is a 70€ kit including PS while I paid 450€ for UCD180AD + Supply-HG, we argued that some mods to BOTH would lead to a nice "battle".
Coils are one of those mods, but input and output caps too were improved. On Tripath side there is still space for improvements on the PS design, 5V regulation, bulk caps (it works with 2 panasonic 10000 uF). I made some mods to UCD too, but there have been few hints. UCD is a ready made product, so it is difficult to tweak.
Thomas
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