Do It Yourself

Well its not like the stax mafia aren't busy and we certainly are not going to do an output stage with 8ma of current, and therefore no reason for a 4 stage amp, and since tube inputs seem to be the big thing lately, well might as well take the kgsshv-carbon design and replace the input fet with an input triode. bonus, no low voltage supplies. not a bonus, ksa1156 and ksc5026 run at close to 1 watt each. I should have a real t8000 end of june, but this should keep some of you busy. I expect joamat to have one built in less than 24 hours. no, no circuit board yet about 70 volts on the plate of the tube, same as t2. optical servo from kgsshv-carbon…

topping dx5ii schematic class B output stage. and they seem to be proud of this crap. discuss dx5ii.PDF

so tyll has been going crazy over the bakoon for planars. well there are a lot of things i don't like about that amp, especially the battery power and distortion. so here is something much better, tested last night at .06%thd, no feedback, output impedance 100k which is solely due to the servo... http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/currentsourceamp2.pdf http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/currentsourceamp2.zip also testing curved traces

Hi guys, I've recently been thinking about having a DIY DAC built, but the only one I know is the Alien USB DAC (or Guzzler's for that matter). What other DIY USB DACs are around? And secondly, how good is the Alien DAC? Cheers, Nanoha

I'd love to hear your impressions it's not every day that a different crossfeed circuit comes about but, when it does, it's worth trying. Unfortunately I don't have any 18K resistors to hand (everything else but ) have ordered some and they will be here Tuesday...... in the meantime if any of you finger on the iron fast guns feel like trying it out and giving feedback it would be appreciated. Feedback in this thread here please, my joint couldn't handle the bandwith, Just thought I'd put this by you guys and trust you'll appreciate it. Pinkie.

Who know headphones that van been transfered to 3M Peltor Optime 105 H10A/III H540A earmuff, without soldering or using soldering glue. To create ultimate sound isolating headphones. Noticed that Urban Ears Plattan version 1 can been used for this. But i search for another headphone that can been used, without removing wires from drivers.

Hi all, I purchased a KGSSHV recently, and whilst overall i'm very pleased with the sound, the pot installed is cheap and unfortunately has some balance issues at lower volumes. It looks to be a modular type pot, and bizarrely has 4 lugs per channel rather than 3. I've managed to get hold of what I'm told is a rather nice TKD 4CP 2500 pot, which has three lugs per channel. Can anyone offer some advice on the correct way to go about wiring it in? Looking at the old pot, there looks to be a set of bridged lugs on the far right which go directly to a piece of wire bridging the inputs at the back of the amp, as well as left/right input and output wires from t…

Hi All... I was cleaning up and found a pair of Electraprint OPT that I had wound for headphone impedance. I've attached the values. I got these for a build of tubelab's TSE that has now changed to a TSE II. My plan was to use 45 tubes for the output, that would give me 1-2 watts. The headphones I use are HE-560 and HE-6 SE. I have HD-650 and Beyer DT-770 (250 Ohm) as well. My thinking was to start with the 32 ohm tap and connect them directly to the headphones. I don't want to fry the headphones or blow my ear drum if something goes wrong so I'm looking for a sanity check. Should I build it for headphones and use these OPT's or abandon them and get a new set …

There are a few of us building this amp, and at least two of us that have taken this on as a first project, so I'm thinking a thread is in order, since I'm sure that there will be some discussion and questions.

First off, I'm about as much of a DIY audio builder as I am a bronze sculptor. Secondly, I recently bought an enclosure from dsavitsk that has some parts in it that were once a DAC. Specifically, it needs a 12AX7 tube and a CS8412 chip. The tube I have already of course. I did some shopping on the 'Bay and found what I believe is the right DAC chip for $6 from a Chinese seller. The rest of the iterations mentioned in this post are strictly for academic purposes. I'm genuinely curious what the differences (if any) are. The version I bought. CS8414CS for $13 The main difference here is that this one can speak hibit (24/96) and purports to have lower jitte…

I want to tackle and finally finish this PINT amp I recently acquired. It's old school and I scored the board for next to nothing, so what the heck. I know the project ended up ceasing because of the crankiness of the 8397. There’s got to be a way to tame this thing. At this point, I’m not sure if I’ve fried the opamps, but I can say that the 8397 gets very very hot. I’m using the LM6172 as my GND channel opamp and this is getting quite warm as well. This is when I power the amp with at least 18v or 24v. I'm getting an unusual amount of DC Offset -- basically the rail supply for each reading that I've done. At first the amp seemed to work but music sounded hollow and not …

I was looking for sth DC coupled hybrid power amp for desktop speaker with no caps or transformers on either input or output. While searching on google, I wanted to find jfet/tube differential, tube voltage gain, MOSFET/BJT current gain design. Then I find this. http://tavishdesign.com/pages/direct-coupled-tube-headphone-amp any opinion? Though there's a cap on the input. Any other SE or balanced configuration will be welcome.

Any recommendations for one, used and cheap preferably? (I know, non-HC). I was looking at a couple of B&K 4011s or maybe an HP3311a? Other? Or am I better off using a PC with my mAudio box and a program (can't remember which one I have, but it isn't bad).

I enjoy thinking about different ways to accomplish the often-overlapping electromechanical goals of audio devices. Every few years I get to considering electrostatic headphone connectors, and every time I end up finding the same collection of vintage part numbers, shared experiences, and a few useful drawings that can be put together to probably lead to a functional socket or plug, if you want to make one yourself. I appreciate and have used that information, and now I'd like to consolidate it and create some actual specifications to help anyone trying to make a plug or socket. The most useful thing to start with would be plug specs. Pin diameter, length, pin circl…

So a Nugget B22 that I recently bought from penger died at a local meet yesterday - I walked up to the amp while someone else was listening (more likely trying to listen) and noticed that the amp was off, which seemed odd. The power switch did nothing and re-plugging the cord did nothing either. One day later the amp still doesn't power on so it wasn't temporary either. I verified this amp as working before the meet, and it worked when I set it up at the meet too, as I listened to some music for awhile on it. I hear absolutely no internal noises when depressing the power button and have no idea what caused this and no idea how to fix it either. (Edit: the power button …

So how difficult would it be to design an upgraded linear power supply for this unit? Something that might fit in a smallish Hammond case maybe.

So, what happens when I have a new (to me) lathe, some left over mahogany and nothing better to do? Yup, those are my HF-1 on the bannana stand, and my maple woodied 325s, which are for sale. But what are those other ones? I call them the HF-1000 I was making some standard woody cups and figured I'd have a run at something resembling the GS-1000 (which I've never seen in person). The mahogany I had was way too dry and none of the standard cups came out well (actually only one survived!), but the goofy mushroom cups came out well enough. So after I finished turning them, Nate gave me a hand drilling them out and we decided to see how they'd look on his …

What's the polarity of the Turbulent Labs driver? Is the green dot + or - ?

So I want to print a holder for some supercaps. Anybody here disign in 3d regularly?

After a few weeks burn-in period of this little beast, I found it's very relaxing to listen to. I can hear more juices coming out and the STAX 009 just doesn't have that analytical sounding cliché to my ears. It also enhances the soundstage and life-like of Focal Utopia makes it way more enjoyable to hear. This is a push-pull design tube Headphone Amplifier/Preamplifier attempting to achieve the true high-performance of headphones from Dynamic, Planar Magnetic to Electrostatic models. I've gotten a few PM's asking about the schematics and stuff so I decided to open a thread to discuss more here. …

I've building a preamplifier that also functions as a headphone amplifier. When no headphones are present, the gain of the internal opamps should be 1x (unity), so that the signal can be passed out the back of the device at line level for a speaker amplifier to further process. When headphones are inserted, the rear outputs disable, and the user should be able to select from no gain (1x), low gain (2x) or high gain (6x) to suit the impedance of the headphones. The entire operation will be controlled from an Arduino. I'm using a switched headphone jack to determine when a set of headphones has been plugged in. The gain should be selectable usi…

Looks Like I'm gonna have to have a dig around in there to see if I can tell what's wrong and try to fix it. I hope it's simple like the jack connection. I'll pop it open and post some gratuitous pics in a bit...

Hi all, I've been more and more interested in building my own amp after having built a relatively simple Elekit amp. I've been reading through the KGSSHV and KGSSHV Carbon build threads and I think I've found the google drives for the schematics and various documents, but it's still a bit confusing where to begin, and I'm not entirely sure I should jump right into trying to build a KGSSHV Carbon. I'm also unclear where one sources the PCBs for any of those builds - seems like various members hold extras and there are some floating around on eBay of dubious origin. Anyway, I'm not exactly certain what build would be good to start out with, or what the differences are …

Ok don't start.. It's the only place nearby that stocks them. So anyone tried any of their crap? I see they have numerous irons from pistol grip 40W to Pencil 15W and adjustable butane 25-50W. Any recommendations on power/type etc for phone wires and circuit DIY work?

ok, I need a quick sanity check. Amplifier input impedance is somewhat arbitrary for the Pass F4, but let's assume 47k, which is the default. Output impedance of my preamp is 100k, with coupling capacitor. My soon-to-be speakers have a f3 of 40 Hz and the driver I'm going to use in my future-to-be speakers has a fs of 48 Hz (it's a 15 cm driver), f3 undecided. I'm considering a 3uF capacitor with a small bypass, maybe 10nF. So, I'm getting 1/(pi*47k||100k*3uF), or fc = 1.66Hz. Opinions?