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Massdrop Cavalli Tube Hybrid


spritzer

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On ‎2018‎年‎3‎月‎11‎日 at 2:26 AM, spritzer said:

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...

Like many tricks in HiFi area,people are willing to believe expensive caps、wires、fuse、rhodium-plated sockets etc. can make sound euphonious,some

companies are to modify their crap stuff with high-priced materials and price the product at the much higher level to make people to think they are sound better.

"tone tuning",this is the word that I hear those people say most.

I often hear they say :  bhse is tuned for 007 not for 009 ,carbon has too much bass ,gg and megatron are tuned for listening vocals,kgss is more "analytical" than musical...

I've built bh/carbon/gg/mega,to me,they're all great amps in the same class.

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“Voiced” is the other term I see used for I assume the same thing. As in “voiced to produce the designer’s signature sound” or some such inane bullshit. If this is a tube amp with coupling caps (and between stages), etc. then there are things you can or could do. A direct coupled SS amp, not so much.


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7 hours ago, luvdunhill said:

 


I believe this is absolutely possible, through varying distortion harmonic levels. I think for example, dominant third-order harmonics, could be a “voicing” of sorts.

Yes, you're right, and an oversimplification on my part.

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10 hours ago, Whitigir said:

Wow, taobao is a dangerous place if they use other builder pictures for advertisement on building KG T2.  Who knows what they build it out to be....I hope it won’t bring KG T2 any negatives, or somebody need to pull some strings 

I doubt people will base a proper product with the China fake counterpart. From Taobao especially.

Though I do have a friend who keeps buying Aliexpress opamps and raving how good they sound compared to the stock opamp in his class D amp. Only time I go to Taobao is for their chassis, can easily cost less than half or a third of eBay prices.

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There's one thing i can't understand is that according to massdrop measurement, this amp has really low THD+N : only 0.0025% https://www.head-fi.org/threads/massdrop-x-alex-cavalli-tube-hybrid-amp-cth-dropping-monday.857673/. If it's a simple tube gain stage coupled to solid state buffer like the original  CTH no way it could have such low THD. Even the schiit Vali2 with global feedback has higher distortion than the Massdrop CTH.

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the thd+N is .0075%, and although it does not specify, its likely at 1khz.

look at the schematic posted above.  about 15db of feedback around the grid of the tube. Lowering the input impedance to bipolar levels or lower and kind of negating any possible use of an input tube. Also the plate current source.

spice indicates a second harmonic distortion of -74db at 1khz (.02%) and a 3rd harmonic distortion of -109db (.0003%) at 1khz

however at 10khz the second harmonic is -60db (.1%) and the third harmonic is -96db (.002%)

you can work out the summation on your own.

plus of course the messed up soundstage due to the inverse phase. Something the plankton experts seem to ignore.

In reality, with an old school analog thd meter, the numbers are going to be much much higher.

and of course this is all measured with a 300 ohm resistor. Use a real load especially low impedance, and the numbers go way up.

 

 

 

Edited by kevin gilmore
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59 minutes ago, kevin gilmore said:

the thd+N is .0075%, and although it does not specify, its likely at 1khz.

look at the schematic posted above.  about 15db of feedback around the grid of the tube. Lowering the input impedance to bipolar levels or lower and kind of negating any possible use of an input tube. Also the plate current source.

spice indicates a second harmonic distortion of -74db at 1khz (.02%) and a 3rd harmonic distortion of -109db (.0003%) at 1khz

however at 10khz the second harmonic is -60db (.1%) and the third harmonic is -96db (.002%)

you can work out the summation on your own.

plus of course the messed up soundstage due to the inverse phase. Something the plankton experts seem to ignore.

In reality, with an old school analog thd meter, the numbers are going to be much much higher.

and of course this is all measured with a 300 ohm resistor. Use a real load especially low impedance, and the numbers go way up.

 

 

 

so spice indicate at least 0.02% thd at 300ohm, real world measurement must be worse, can't understand their spec 0.0014% at 50ohm but at the same time i dont' believe some big company like cavalli do some marketing shit like that. 

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On 15/03/2018 at 7:42 PM, spritzer said:

Somebody in China tries to make a clone and fails... :lol:

Mikhail did the originals....  and failed....:lol:

17 hours ago, Thai Tao said:

so spice indicate at least 0.02% thd at 300ohm, real world measurement must be worse, can't understand their spec 0.0014% at 50ohm but at the same time i dont' believe some big company like cavalli do some marketing shit like that. 

It's called Audiophoolery........:P

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Even with the grossly inflated prices cavalli eventually went under due to too many hands in the cookie jar and shit quality requiring a lot of repairs, especially the liquid carbon.

when there was only one standard for measuring distortion it was easy. Now that there are a number of adc based distortion devices each with different firmware and software, and digital filters you can generate impossibly low distortion numbers that are meaningless.

jude might want to look at how measurements were done many moons ago and emulate that. Far more useful information.

i think a reasonable number on sales exceed 8M$ over the 8 year life of cavalli. Lots of people are going to take a bath, just like singlepower

Edited by kevin gilmore
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