[mkcarnut]

I'm finding I am liking mine more and more.  They really are special.

Mark

[jtwrace]

I'm finding I am liking mine more and more.  They really are special.

Mark

I agree!

[EuroDriver]

Galaxy 330 x 280 case with new 3mm front panel, 3mm back panel and 2.5 mm top and bottom covers from www.schaeffer-ag.de/en (very pleased with the quality of the cut outs

Oyaide IEC socket, Supra Lowrad mains cable

Mundorf silver-gold teflon insulated wiring for speaker output to WBT NextGen binding posts

Mundorf silver solder

Layout philosophy - keep the input, power supply and loudspeaker wires as far apart as possible and at  90 degrees if possible.  Diagonal placement of SMPS helps keep the wires apart.  Tightly twisted speaker wires go vertically up to high mounted speaker binding posts.   

I don't know if it will make a discernable sonic difference, but I have done the easy tweaks I know

[ajst2duk]

Galaxy 330 x 280 case with new 3mm front panel, 3mm back panel and 2.5 mm top and bottom covers from www.schaeffer-ag.de/en (very pleased with the quality of the cut outs

Oyaide IEC socket, Supra Lowrad mains cable

Mundorf silver-gold teflon insulated wiring for speaker output to WBT NextGen binding posts

Mundorf silver solder

Layout philosophy - keep the input, power supply and loudspeaker wires as far apart as possible and at  90 degrees if possible.  Diagonal placement of SMPS helps keep the wires apart.  Tightly twisted speaker wires go vertically up to high mounted speaker binding posts.   

I don't know if it will make a discernable sonic difference, but I have done the easy tweaks I know

Looks great - I'm sure it will be stunning - look forward to hearing the review of listening experience

AJ

[santacore]

Nice build! I bought the same speaker posts for mine, I hope they work well.

[EuroDriver]

- To stiffen up the top and botton covers, I had some 16 mm MDF cut to 80 mm x 50 mm and glued then with epoxy to the middle of the front and rear panels.  I then used M3 20mm long wood screws to screw down the top and bottom covers.

- Dynamat Extreme applied to the inside of the top cover.

- I would recommend a MDF center post, screwed from top and bottom to cut down on vibrations further.  One could use another piece of Galaxy side extrusion, but MDF is a lot cheaper

- I had my covers drilled with 3 holes on each side for fastening to the side extrusions.  I would recommend four holes to get a really good tight fit. 

After my experience with how accurately my local "Baumarkt" cuts MDF I would the next time around build a case with double wall side panels of 12 mm MDF and aluminium 2mm sheet from Schaeffer epoxied together.  Fronts would be 3mm and I would be tempted to have 3 mm to and bottom covers as well

I would make the chassis about 380 x 280 to allow more space for keeping lots of air, the best dielectric, between the wires

[jackman]

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to post a couple pix of my new addition.  It sounds great and the workmanship is excellent.   The person I purchased this from originally built it and decided to take a different route, so it became available.  He put heat-sinks, EMF shields and really nice Diamond Racing cones on it and used top quality wire and really nice binding posts.  Also, the case is really nice looking with good ventilation. 

You can see the heat-sinks in the bottom photo.  I know they are not required but they can't hurt. 

Sorry for the camera phone pix but it's the best I can do at the moment. 

[jonbee]

Nice, Jack and EuroDriver. Some nice touches there. The ERS sheets and heatsinks are nice touches, as well as the parts upgrades.
I'm puttig together a list of upgrades to add to mine when I get the time and urge. Thanks to all for adding their experiences. Spending a little extra for the upgrades is well worth it, IMO, in the context of the performance to be had in the basic config.

[Rclark]

Looks really nice Jackman, I think dual mono makes the most sense with this amp.

[tktran303]

Finally assembled my dual mono nCore.

I used a bottom mounted on/off switch, located at the front left of the chassis.

All AC input, SMPS600 power supply harness and speaker output cable twisted.

The the flash overexposed the colour of the blue/white wires of the Mogami/QuietConduit input cable so they both appear white, but my wiring is as follows:

XLR pin 1 to ground of chassis
XLR pin 2 to blue wire of input cable
XLR pin 3 to white wire of input cable
Ground of chassis to shield/sheath of input cable.

I use the Modu Slimline Case in full aluminium as well, with a black front panel. It's a nice case that comes with various heights and depths, but I wanted something in the standard 19" rack width, and 2 or 3U height. The 2U height is not quite high enough to mount the NC400 on the side panel heatsinks, but with a 3U version of this case you could mount as many NC400 on the side heatsinks as you could fit!

If only Hypex sold a multi-channel wiring harness so you could easily connect one SMPS600 to 2 or 3 NC400 modules.

[cab]

I would move the power input wiring farther away from the smps to amp wiring on the left side....

[turbogti]

Galaxy 330 x 280 case with new 3mm front panel, 3mm back panel and 2.5 mm top and bottom covers from www.schaeffer-ag.de/en (very pleased with the quality of the cut outs

Oyaide IEC socket, Supra Lowrad mains cable

Mundorf silver-gold teflon insulated wiring for speaker output to WBT NextGen binding posts

Mundorf silver solder

Layout philosophy - keep the input, power supply and loudspeaker wires as far apart as possible and at  90 degrees if possible.  Diagonal placement of SMPS helps keep the wires apart.  Tightly twisted speaker wires go vertically up to high mounted speaker binding posts.   

I don't know if it will make a discernable sonic difference, but I have done the easy tweaks I know

very nice built with very good choices of cables, binding etc... please let us know how it sounds!

[EuroDriver]

Posted under US listening tour even though the system is in Germany

My comments on the NCores compared to the W4S ST-500 After a week of operation

-  The bass is visceral, very clean and strong.  Very noticeable on the double bass notes, there is much less flopping around and wooliness.  I almost don’t need the subwoofer anymore

-  The realism of the voices is eye opening (Patti Barber, Diana Krall), but the tone color is noticeable cooler than the ST-500 but not to an extent that bothers me any more after several hours of listening

-  My B&W 805 Diamonds are not very dynamic, but with the NCores driving them I no longer have any complaints about lack of dynamics

-  I am a detail freak, and the NCores delivery it in spades with new little details that I did not notice before.  The extra detail is a bit of a double edged sword.  There is a lot more of reverberation detail perceptible from the speakers, but I have found on certain classical orchestral recordings, this extra detail actually makes the focus of the sound stage significantly worse than it was with the ST-500.  What I had to do was to increase the area of sound absorption panels [GIK 244] between the speakers, and then everything snapped into focus superbly.

Summary, I am a happy camper, with no significant down sides

Comment after 2 weeks

The sound has clearly improved from a week ago, the tone has become warmer, so my only mild criticism has now gone ! Voices have acquired more texture, live performances, sound even more live, I am going wow every minute or so on familiar tracks

The transparency and detail of the Ncore has had some unexpected consequences.  I have a Velodyne 1200 SPL Ultra hooked up to the single ended outputs of the Audiolab 8200 CDQ, whilst the XLR's feed the power amp.  The output stage of the CDQ is not designed to drive both XLR and single ended simultaneously.  With the ST-500, I could not detect any sound quality degradation using both sets of outputs, however with the NCores I do notice a degradation.  I have now totally disconnected the subwoofer and single ended IC's from the CDQ, but because the bass is so strong with the Ncores, I don't miss subwoofer !

I believe the NCores deserve a better DAC and I am looking at the NAD M51.  That's the problem with the NCore, you want to start upgrading the source components 


Audiolab 8200CDQ > Wireworld Eclipse XLR > dual mono Ncore > inAkustik LS803 > B&W 805 Diamond

Supra Lorad AC cord > Oyaide IEC 
Neutrik XLR > NCore > Mundorf Ag/Au Teflon wire > WBT NextGen Mundorf  Ag solder

[steve_sf]

Aluminum chassis obtained from:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/JC2109-Full-aluminum-Power-amplifier-chassis-AMP-Enclosure-case-BOX/621172993.html

Chassis includes fused IEC inlet. They have a lower-profile version that probably works just fine. I went overkill on the cooling ability just in case the room gets hot. Also, I think the fins look cool.  The e-tailor takes credit card and shipping is fast, albeit expensive. Total price is comparable to other options I've seen, though. The store has a good selection of chassis:
http://www.aliexpress.com/store/800514/search?SearchText=Chassis

Wire (1 ft), XLR sockets and binding posts from Handmade Electronics:
http://www.hndme.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=1125&idcategory=145
http://www.hndme.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=2515&idcategory=0
http://www.hndme.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=440&idcategory=0

Binding post holes are 1/2 inch. XLR socket holes are 7/8 inch. Had to go to a specialty hardware store for the 7/8 inch drill bit as Home Depot/Lowes didn't stock it. Bought 250V/10A ceramic fuses for the IEC inlets at Fry's.

Been running the amps since October 22 and must say they sound phenomenal. The ncore trounces my Nuforce REF 9SEv3 amps w/CMA upgrade for musical realism, finesse and bass. Not bad for an $1800 BOM set of amps to soundly beat $5k+ units. I predict I will be happy with these amps for a very, very long time -- at least until Bruno comes out with something better. Cheers to Mr. Putzeys for making these available to the DIY community.

[jonbee]

Not bad for an $1800 BOM set of amps to soundly beat $5k+ units. I predict I will be happy with these amps for a very, very long time -- at least until Bruno comes out with something better. Cheers to Mr. Putzeys for making these available to the DIY community.

My thoughts exactly. We should feel fortunate that for a few hours work those of us that are even a little handy can put these together as a fun, straightforward, well documented project and end up with with these stunning results.
After a couple of months I love mine, as have all who have heard it here.
The Hypex business model is very unusual, to say the least, and I wish them well.
BTW, do you fine the brand of stout shown is optimum for the amp?

[James Romeyn]

Looks really nice Jackman, I think dual mono makes the most sense with this amp.

That could be true.  It might also be true that it's system dependent. 

The greater the amp current capacity the more should the following be weighted (one SMPS600 per NC400 is 2-Ohm rated and appears to pass considerably more current than average). 

The more difficult is the speaker load the more does cable length affect performance.  The more cable length affects performance the quicker does performance drop per each unit of increased speaker cable length.  The shorter the amp-to-speaker distance the shorter the speaker cable. 

Mono blocks allow the shortest speaker cables. 

[ufokillerz]

got my 3 ncores done!

[James Romeyn]

got my 3 ncores done!

Very nice!  For dedicated HT only or music/HT?  AFAIK you're only the second person to build three NC400. 

My system is dual-use music/HT, employing pure analog Trinaural for music.  Trinaural's 3.1 (or 3.0) output fixes stereo's well-documented defects described by stereo inventor Alan Blumlein, AES papers, and Stereophile.  Trinaural has 3.1 HT Bypass. 

If the HT employs front projector and retractable perforated screen there is no negative impact on music and audio/music performance for the HT is ideal (better than any wall-mounted screen).  Spatial performance is ideal because such screen is acoustically transparent and allows speakers to be spaced from the front wall (both impossible with any wall-mounted screen regardless of composition). 

So Trinaural improves both music and HT performance.  The cost (Trinaural, 3rd/center speaker and amp matching the L/R) is far less than an entire 2nd system for HT and its required real estate.

Maximum screen size is limited to the distance at which pixels become visible.  I'm quite sure several screen manufactures have no practical minimum limit for custom sizes.  IOW, you might consider such dual-use system even in a smaller room with smaller-than-normal retractable screen.  It's purely personal, but I prefer the cosmetics of a front projector and retractable screen vs. any wall mounted TV.  In use, the fan-controlled cooling system of my five year old Mitsubishi 1080P front-projector is dead silent directly over my head on a 91" ceiling.  (After turning it off, fan speed sometimes increases to become barely detectable, but only within a few feet.)           

[ufokillerz]

Very nice!  For dedicated HT only or music/HT?  AFAIK you're only the second person to build three NC400. 

My system is dual-use music/HT, employing pure analog Trinaural for music.  Trinaural's 3.1 (or 3.0) output fixes stereo's well-documented defects described by stereo inventor Alan Blumlein, AES papers, and Stereophile.  Trinaural has 3.1 HT Bypass. 

If the HT employs front projector and retractable perforated screen there is no negative impact on music and audio/music performance for the HT is ideal (better than any wall-mounted screen).  Spatial performance is ideal because such screen is acoustically transparent and allows speakers to be spaced from the front wall (both impossible with any wall-mounted screen regardless of composition). 

So Trinaural improves both music and HT performance.  The cost (Trinaural, 3rd/center speaker and amp matching the L/R) is far less than an entire 2nd system for HT and its required real estate.

Maximum screen size is limited to the distance at which pixels become visible.  I'm quite sure several screen manufactures have no practical minimum limit for custom sizes.  In use, the fan-controlled cooling system of my five year old Mitsubishi 1080P front-projector is dead silent directly over my head on a 91" ceiling!  (After turning it off, fan speed sometimes increases to become barely detectable, but only within a few feet.)           

I am more HT then music. I do have a projector, but unfortunately it is a living room area, and not a dedicated listening space. I have a 106" tab tensioned screen and a jvc projector i got 2 years ago. I have a 80" sharp 3d/led hdtv as well.

These amps weren't actually built by me, i had all the parts, and sent them over to a amp builder i've bought from since the early 2000's, head-fi builder.  He took 3 months to build them, but the guy does a ton of research, reading all the threads here and over at diyaudio. Prior to this, my L/C/R were powered by a ati3000 series amplifier, then red dragon audio m1000 monoblocks.

[dr.sah]

hi guys, this is my hypex nc400. Didn't build myself.