6 hours ago, kevin gilmore said:

should a chassis like this show up, i'm absolutely sure i can make a megatronxl custom board fit.

Better yet... Single Power ES-1 board!!    Seriously though, as fucked as the ES-1 and ES-2 were... there was less wrong with the actual circuit than this pile of fail.  Let's put build quality aside, the permanent 100V offset, non floating heaters chewing up tubes and some other "minor" issues... they did produce enough volume for a normal listening session.  

speaking of fucked, here is the latest highend.de stupidity. tube current source added to antares v3.5 board.  6sn7 has a max cathode to filament voltage of +/-100v which means that anything over 400vppss at the output is slowly destroying the current source tube. god damm how hard is it to read the 6sn7 datasheet. even worse the filaments of both current source tubes tied to the same transformer winding. sure does not look like srpp.

how fucking stupid is this idiot.

edit: this may have been done by someone else using the highend.de board.

Edited February 13Feb 13 by kevin gilmore

That doesn't look like a stock unit to me but SRPP off a common heater supply...that's such a terrible idea.  

I do find it funny though that the High-amp circuits seem to be regressing, getting worse and worse over the years while still being filled with parts that are long out of production.  

I had a chance to listen to an Audeze CRBN2 through this amp yesterday at Upscale Audio's Axpona 2026 table. Audeze had the Z10e at their booth for auditioning and the experience was starkly in the Z10e's favor. The Feliks Audio Bliss smothered the imaging, engagement and dynamics completely. I don't know about the Z10e's design or build quality, but the end result of my experience was a $20k+ amp missing the point of electrostatics. 

Ouch, that's really sad as the Z10e is pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it comes to electrostatic amps.  

2 hours ago, spritzer said:

Ouch, that's really sad as the Z10e is pretty much the bottom of the barrel when it comes to electrostatic amps.  

Which is another shame, because Audeze brought a Carbon CC to Canjam Chicago in 23 and the original CRBN was best in show for me. Hardly any space at Axpona for anyone. 

Feliks Audio also make a few dynamic amps.  The Envy (7K EUR) and the Envy Susvara Edition (a paltry 13K EUR) have similar visual DNA to the Bliss.

I suspect they share similar design decisions and component selection, if you take my meaning.

Peak on inside.