Hi guys, the nearly 13K views of this thread have not gone unnoticed and I have not given up on this product at all! In fact, I am nearing a point where I can pursue it fully as I am finishing two designs that have kept me very busy for the last year. The KWH 225i Hybrid power integrated amp is about to roll out and the Ai325, 300B 25W PP tube integrated has also been VERY WELL received by the first customers lucky enough to receive the first hand-built amps!
The next step is for me to lay out a matrix of options and ideas for this design. Things like quantity of inputs, balanced inputs/outputs, volume control, DAC supply built in, etc.
The plan is as follows:
A chassis will be designed to accept the buffer circuit and power supply design.
Enough room will have to be allowed for to accept the following (but not limited to) options:
Volume control, defeatable.
Tube rectifier.
Multiple inputs/outputs.
Separate power supply output to DAC(s) - ideal would be adjustable voltages and connectors for different DACs with wall wart supplies.
Balanced inputs/outputs - getting more costly here as this requires transformer coupling!
I do NOT plan on offering the following:
Tone controls.
Balance controls.
tape loop or any other processor loop (would like consider Home Theater Bypass however).
No DSP of any kind - purely analog design.
The plan being to design this in a relatively compact enclosure with a clean and simple face plate. Steel enclosure with black powder coat. Maybe silver and black face plates.
Basic model being just a buffer with no volume control and possibly two inputs and two outputs.
Starting price of this product to be < $1K.
Basic buffer circuit will offer:
Very wide frequency response - 20Hz - 100Khz
Very low distortion < .05%
Very low output impedance < 50 ohms.
As such, it will introduce tubes into the system without adding the typical soft bass, rolled off highs and added distortion. It will offer ideal impedance matching to your amp(s).
It can be used in a stereo speaker setup or with headphones.
It allows the system to be as simple as:
Source - Buffer - Amp - Speaker.
Source - Buffer - Powered Speakers.
Source - Buffer - HP amps - HP's.
In addition to being a buffer, it can ALSO be the UPGRADED linear supply for your DAC! I know that many people are getting tremendous improvements from adding external linear power supplies to a number of modern DACs.
This will be much cheaper than our mods to digital products and may be used with any number of different sources.
It can replace a preamp in a simple system and avoid the need to use the digital volume control built into many DACs!
With the DAC supply option, it also offers an upgraded DAC supply to a variety of DACs.
The key being to make this modular.
Please share your FB here as I take this from concept to reality!
Thanks,
Dan