so  yesterday this showed up

 

 

 

 

 

quoting alex...

"In a nutshell, the Liquid Carbon is a fully-discrete, fully-balanced, transportable solid-state headphone amplifier that is capable of driving all but the most demanding of headphones - delivering satisfying levels and offering superb driver control for exceptional detail and linearity."

lets run that thru fact check for a second.   yep...   "Liar Liar Pants on Fire"

fully balanced?  nope, not in the way that any truly differential amplifier would be. (like any of the super symmetry variants) and absolutely no common mode rejection.

fully-discrete?  nope not really, see the single ended to balanced converter in the schematic below

http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/lc.pdf

so much fail in one package...

 

can the stax mafia do better, you betcha. board in progress now, will run up to +/-24V and bolt to a heatsink. So say a liquid gold clone for about $300 in parts.

people, why do you buy poorly built crap like this.  Buy Schiit, or Audio-GD  or many other high quality brands for a lot less money.

 

Edited June 25, 201610 yr by kevin gilmore

Not excactly Nelson Pass, is it..?           

 

Perhaps it wuz designed by Di Arrhoea....   

Edited June 25, 201610 yr by wink

This really should be called Liquid Shit as two Schiit Modi amps are much better than this.  Far cheaper too... 

in progress

 

Edited June 25, 201610 yr by kevin gilmore

3 hours ago, spritzer said:

This really should be called Liquid Shit as two Schiit Modi amps are much better than this.  Far cheaper too... 

Actually, there is a lot of carbon in poo.

Interesting work Kevin/Birgir (as always when something new comes out  )

Can I start by making a passionate plea for enlarging the board a bit so that tombstoning the resistors isn't necessary?

 

//UFN

But but but so tiny...

the resistors are currently .4 inch and the verticals are .2 inch

this is the first of many boards. Due to stuff in the middle, .4 resistors are going to make the board much bigger.

almost liquid gold bigger.  Oops

what do you want for 6 hours total.

 

and its schiit magni uber

updated board picture above

board is 3.85 x 2.5 inches

 

definitely the .47 ohms have to be made bigger, because the current surface mount ones are blowing up

 

 

Edited June 25, 201610 yr by kevin gilmore

9 hours ago, UFN said:

Interesting work Kevin/Birgir (as always when something new comes out  )

Can I start by making a passionate plea for enlarging the board a bit so that tombstoning the resistors isn't necessary?

 

//UFN

Or go surface mount if/where power handling requirements allow?

I'm really impressed by the level of tininess  and with GRLV singles, this would be a very compact amp. 

and it will sound a whole bunch better due to the power supply

input fets no longer available as to92, so they are now sot23

may be the reason the liquid gold was canceled as that used to92 input transistors.

bigger version, most resistors .5 inch and laying down

3.85 x 3

 

Excellent. Looks worth the extra 1/2" of board to me 

//UFN

3 minutes ago, UFN said:

Excellent. Looks worth the extra 1/2" of board to me 

//UFN

Okay then...

much more better version now above.

fets on the back side. just about 100% groundplane

its about $15 per channel

could use the caddok resistors for the .47 ohm, and double the price of the amplifier

 

 

Edited June 26, 201610 yr by kevin gilmore

Think about it, if Cavalli worked for Schiit, and Cavalli means horse......    Well, you make the connection....

 

(With sincere apologies to Jason Stoddard & Mike Moffat, and all the other denizens of Schiit Audio).....

what is likely the final version posted including board file.

actually performs better with bipolar outputs.

Of course it does, we don't need no stinkin' mosfets!!   

Do you think we should go for a move back to germanium transistors?

I mean, if you want distortion in your amp, you want it to sound good.

(Let's hope Cavalli doesn't find out about 'em)  https://robertkeeley.com/2013/09/germanium-transistors/

Edited June 28, 201610 yr by wink

absolutely we need to cryo all parts.

Including our ears!!! 

Don't forget to cryo the source too. Everyone knows that 1s and 0s only sound their best after they've been exposed to -190c temperatures.

15 hours ago, spritzer said:

Of course it does, we don't need no stinkin' mosfets!!   

MOSFETs work great!  As current sources.

I tried to cryo my ears, but I got a cold reception from the people who do it.     

So, I'm going with having my ear canals quantum tunnelled to cut out the different propagation delays at varying frequencies.....   

This is akin to reducing the jitter in your DAC, but a much better high tech solution.......     

It also helps eliminate the Josephson Junction noise in your synapses and the sound of quantum foam. 

7 hours ago, JimL said:

MOSFETs work great!  As current sources.

I know...   

mosfet current sources are depletion mode. made a very different way from enhancement mode mosfets.

 

updated board, one of the fets was labeled wrong