March 8, 20188 yr I finally picked it up and it doesn't disappoint... Jesus this is bad and one funny thing, the surface coating on the chassis is very different from the CarbonX. Same quality parts, ZWEE output socket and the "legendary" SANNI volume control i.e. crappy Alps clone. Now the chassis is the same one as the CX but much better surface finish. The other one scratches very easily (as in I've already scratched it) but this one seems more resilient. One funny thing though, the hole for the tube doesn't quite line up. I tried to take a picture of it but it might not be as apparent as in real life. The space on the right is quite a bit bigger than on the left... No way this was done by hand so somebody was really sloppy... Now for the rest of the pics. The wall wart is also different, now featuring a built in US plug and 28VDC/1.25A output. The large cap in the PSU was flat down but I raised it up. That last pic is just baffling. Why on earth would anybody put MLCC caps this close to the socket. If they see any force on them, they can crack and short out. Instant fire... Shit engineering as usual...
March 8, 20188 yr One thing that baffles me a bit about both this and the LCX is that they both look (to my uneducated eye) to be wasting a lot of space. With some decent heat sinking, couldn't both be made a lot smaller without incurring significant noise penalties? Edited March 8, 20188 yr by Kattefjaes
March 8, 20188 yr 8significant areas on both units have circuit board heatsink area. Still you could easily attach real heatsinks to those areas and put more holes in the case to let the heat out. And then bias up the output a bit more. This one uses a 28V power supply. So output rails are +/-14v, pretty low voltage swing. Outputs are MJD243/MJD253 and are bipolar. tube is current source plate load, capacitor coupled to a virtually identical copy of the liquid carbon output stage (current feedback/bipolar) with a different servo. Edited March 8, 20188 yr by kevin gilmore
March 8, 20188 yr Author Been doing some testing using the Audio-GD as the dac... I've tripped the protection circuit on the CarbonX and the CTH just died when plugging in headphones. Returns for Massdrop will be super fun on this one...
March 9, 20188 yr ....and people pay real money for this priceless piece of exotica.........?????? You gonna send yours back for a refund...?.?.?
March 9, 20188 yr Going thru the schematic its kind of obvious that for the 1/4 jack, this amplifier inverts phase. Not sure about whether the wiring on the 4 pin is flipped to fix this problem. people sensitive to phase, or at least notice the difference, and this amp is going to sound different.
March 9, 20188 yr 12 hours ago, spritzer said: Been doing some testing using the Audio-GD as the dac... I've tripped the protection circuit on the CarbonX and the CTH just died when plugging in headphones. Returns for Massdrop will be super fun on this one... I'm more curious as to how the Audio Gd DAC sounds compared to the Denafrips Ares..
March 10, 20188 yr Author On 3/9/2018 at 6:29 AM, Rossliew said: I'm more curious as to how the Audio Gd DAC sounds compared to the Denafrips Ares.. I haven't spent any time comparing them but this R2R seems to be a very different animal. It also goes through the main amp all the time as the gain switch is active even in fixed output mode.
March 10, 20188 yr After cavalli stopping doing their business，many cavalli clone such as "solid silver" which is thoroughly a LAu clone and of course LL/LL2T clone are produced on Taobao. just can't understand why cavalli crap are quite popular in china，that's weird !
March 10, 20188 yr because i'm lazy, taobao links for liquid gold clone and LL please. approximate schematic here. too lazy to finish the plate servo. some resistor values obviously wrong, probing from here with voltmeter to Iceland seems unreliable. (and kinda slow) .1% thd at 10khz 2nd harmonic. which is not that horrible cth2.PDF Edited March 13, 20188 yr by kevin gilmore
March 10, 20188 yr https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z10.1-c.w4004-2626060199.15.78a718fbmKNLgN&id=564191086393 Here's the LL clone with kgst power supply，the board looks quiet the same as one of the spritzer's LL mod in this thread ，and LAu clone are not ready for sale，but i've received picture of the sample.
March 10, 20188 yr Author What's up with those V-caps? The circuit is fully DC coupled so special insanity? I do like the cloned chassis though... As it turns out I have my fans as well... https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1.20141002.7.7fbc42fdH73z3A&scm=1007.10009.70205.100200300000001&id=543961961161&pvid=4b6da6a3-603d-4eba-962f-6f36272bacf7 https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=2013.1.20141002.5.7fbc42fdH73z3A&scm=1007.10009.70205.100200300000001&id=563080882986&pvid=4b6da6a3-603d-4eba-962f-6f36272bacf7 Even fake circuit boards as I never released the mini boards. Those are completely wrong but since when has that stopped anybody...
March 10, 20188 yr You absolutely do want to plug your beloved electrostatic transducers into those- clearly fully legit. Edited March 10, 20188 yr by Kattefjaes
March 11, 20188 yr They warn that technical parameters may be changed without any announcement, so you could receive whatever they're inclined to send
March 11, 20188 yr 1 hour ago, Torpedo said: They warn that technical parameters may be changed without any announcement, so you could receive whatever they're inclined to send
March 11, 20188 yr Author Nothing wrong with a magical potato... Do check out the updated schematic Kevin posted above and see if this makes any sense to people. This amp is such a pile of shit that it isn't even funny but how much do you want to bet the Liquid Crimson at nearly 3K$ was exactly the same? Fully single ended with a single 6922...
March 11, 20188 yr On 3/10/2018 at 12:53 PM, Kung said: https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a1z10.1-c.w4004-2626060199.15.78a718fbmKNLgN&id=564191086393 Here's the LL clone with kgst power supply，the board looks quiet the same as one of the spritzer's LL mod in this thread ，and LAu clone are not ready for sale，but i've received picture of the sample. Why is the transformer upside down??
March 11, 20188 yr 1 hour ago, justin said: Why is the transformer upside down?? To give the wiring a better shot at shorting out against the case, hopefully before the owner realizes what a pile this thing is?
March 11, 20188 yr 2 hours ago, justin said: Why is the transformer upside down?? Sometimes flipping toroids will reduce stray fields.
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