Amp Camp Amp - ACA

What balanced pre-amp did you purchase if you don't mind being asked? thanks.


I built a Hafler DH-101 and Hafler DH-220 although not board level assembly. Still fun and back when my hearing was better, convinced myself the best ever..........Happy to have found this group of diyaudio. Excited again to be doing some audio projects. I too plan on bridging but will leave option to use as originally designed. Don't think it will drive my copycat Rodgers LS-35A 15 ohm crossover speakers that I built earlier this year with out being bridged but we'll see. Happy your parts are coming.
 
Have built an external power supply for upcoming AmpCamp 1.6 project. Don't know how well this will work. Just could not see using a laptop power supply. The reasons listed I have no problem with other than I guess can't stand the extra wire/brick in the picture. Yes can hide it but I can see through walls and know it is there all tangled up.....Just joking.

Will try to upload pictures. Built with Galaxy 2U chassis. Had to add spacer at the top for clearance. Waiting kit to arrive. Bear with me if pictures don't upload correctly. Hope they are all in one batch. OOPS, Don't know how to upload a url link for pictures in a folder on my pc. Oh well........Tried copy and paste into url but no good either. Sorry..
 
OOPS, Don't know how to upload a url link for pictures in a folder on my pc. Oh well........Tried copy and paste into url but no good either. Sorry..[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the tip. Here are pictures.


Each Red LED is indication of both 24VDC power supplies are active. Each are 24VDC 5A output. Blue LED is indication of manually switched on cooling fan. It is very quiet. Will shorten amphenol cable later. Not sure of grounding to eventual other chassis with the ampcamp boards installed. Interconnect does have a ground wire connected to this chassis and would assume need to attach to to other chassis somewhere. DC negative is not common to anything yet. Should it be? Should it also be tied to earth ground also? At work we tie dc negative to ground to use to calibrate pressure switches using voltage and not having to disconnect the wires to us ohms to make or break the switch. I assume the same can be said for using dc common to ground is OK? Class D for DC supply should not care, right? thanks and you all have a great weekend.
 

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To sr71castle:
That is a nice PS build there. I have a few suggestions. From the IEC 120VAC connector on the back plate, you have both the white wire (Ground or Neutral) and the green wire (Grounding or Earth Ground) connected together at the chassis. There is a reason they are not connected at the plug. Disconnect the white (ground) wires from the chassis. I assume you are using some SMPS that has separate 120 VAC inputs for A and B outputs. If it makes you feel better, you can run an earth ground through the Amphenol and connect to the chassis of the amp, but not to the amp input ground or amp power ground. Next time you will want to have the black wire from the IEC go first to a fuse before going to anything else like the switch (not critical right now). I am not sure what you mean in that sentence containing "calibrate pressure switches", but No, do not connect the 24 VDC negative to earth ground or AC power ground. Unless the SMPS instructions say the 24 VDC - output connection is referenced to earth ground, you cannot assume it. There is nothing to gain by doing that. Have fun with the amp build and please post more pics of the finished amp.
 
Unless the SMPS instructions say the 24 VDC - output connection is referenced to earth ground, you cannot assume it. There is nothing to gain by doing that. Have fun with the amp build and please post more pics of the finished amp. quoted from propitious...



Propitious thanks for the tips. What does not show in the picture is that the IEC has a fuse built into it so has some protection right off the bat. Then each PS has its own fuse. and each fuse is in series with either PS A or B. When you say SMPS that is what caught my eye about not grounding - and correcting my wrong idea about the PS negative DC end.



At work our 24DC volts is standard with lead acid battery backup. Years ago they had us ground the 24DC - By doing this we can read 24 volts to ground at the switch 200 feet out in the field to calibrate it when seeing the voltage drop out when setpoint is reached. Easier than removing both 24 + and - and using the Ohms setting to see the microswitch make and break. Glad you pointed out


Having seen all kinds of ideas of earth ground and chassis ground rules/ ideas etc I went with the copper washer with copper wire to make it common. I also did not know that anodized aluminum does not conduct electricity. So for what I thought for safety went with the copper washer as common and to try to not have all kinds of ground loops??.
Thanks again for the tips.
 
Has anyone tried biamping Linkwitz's LX-mini with a pair of ACAs? I've found very little on forums in regards to the pairing which may be for good reason.
I tried using ACA for the high frequency drivers in LXmini and PeeCeeBee V3 amp for the woofer, however these drivers are no very efficient. I don't think ACA can drive LXmini.

Thought one can still use ACA to drive LXmini but not at it's full potential.

Regards
Bilal
 
IINM, Tom Christiansen owns a pair of LXMinis which he drives with a four channel build of one of his LM3886 designs. As delightful sounding an amp as the ACA is, and hopefully there will soon be some field reports of them operating in bridged mode, they'll not likely to deliver sufficient power to demonstrate the full dynamic capability of the LX Minis.

Horses for courses.


I'd think what would make an "appropriate" speaker (kit) for a single ACA would very much depend on the room and your anticipated listening levels and program material.
 
IINM, Tom Christiansen owns a pair of LXMinis which he drives with a four channel build of one of his LM3886 designs. As delightful sounding an amp as the ACA is, and hopefully there will soon be some field reports of them operating in bridged mode, they'll not likely to deliver sufficient power to demonstrate the full dynamic capability of the LX Minis.

Horses for courses.


I'd think what would make an "appropriate" speaker (kit) for a single ACA would very much depend on the room and your anticipated listening levels and program material.

Copy that. Apartment living so looking for holographic imaging at modest levels with enough bass to satisfy me but not annoy the neighbors.

Been doing audio long enough to know this description may be helpful but possibly not.

Thinking I may try it anyways just to see. If anything, there is building some F5s to see if they work better or take what I learn from the LXminis and try my hand at a higher efficiency version. Or getting in on the next ACA buy and going monoblock. Audio is fun!
 
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Thanks for the insight, Mr. Nelson Pass. I'll have to keep poking around for other kits/designs but maybe take a chance on the minis if I can't find anything else that looks interesting.

With an active crossover: The ACA's sound absolutely beautiful driving the ESS AMT. Am using those as mono blocks, along with an Emotiva XPA 200 to drive woofers with the active crossover crossed at 750 cycles.

The high efficiency of the AMT and it's resistive characteristic of around 6 ohms no matter where you measure it in it's passband makes the ACA a really good fit to drive it.

An AMT on top of a woofer in a box makes a really nice setup. Food for thought.
 
Thanks for the suggestion. Looking into them. Also looking at the Markaudio stuff. The idea of a full range with bass assist managed by an active x-over is where I think I'm headed. Having some quality multi-channel amplification coming has me thinking outside of the box... ;)



Funny I’m in a similar process. I’m building a pair of fhxl’s though to see how I’m going to approach the bass. I’m hoping for only needing a sub, which I already have but might try building something different too.

Meanwhile I’m building an Aksa’s lender preamp and two ACA channels now. I am leaning to having four channels built for a bridged stereo. I went with the Aksa for the flexibility of driving a mosfet follower in the future if I decide to try that route.
 
ACA V1.6 Balanced vs. Single Ended

Hi,

I currently have a single ended pre amp and I will be running the two ACA V1.6’s as two bridged mono blocks (using the jumper work around). I am wondering how much of a sonic benefit I would realize by swapping out the single ended preamp for a balanced preamp, considering that none of my source components have balanced outputs?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

Jim.
 
The one and only
Joined 2001
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Balanced inputs for the ACA will reduce distortion quite a bit, as opposed
to simply bridging the amps with a single-ended input. This occurs by
virtue of the cancellation of the 2nd harmonic.

You will end up with a different character, but there's a good chance
you will prefer it, so it should be tried.