[albee]

Dmason:  Just for kicks, I put the SI back into my system and set my 25A power supply for about 13V and started rocking.  Right off the bat it had better imaging and a more coherent sound than my Teac.  The Teac has 200+ hours and my SI maybe 60.  SO, I will be using the SI for a while to see if I will pursue battery power for it or a Vinnie/Wayne amp.  (The 2024 chip certainly seems just a tad more relaxed sounding than the Teac, but it's a GOOD thing.)

[Dmason]

I also think it is interesting that Paul finds the ClariT enough juice to drive the FTA2000's, when I find it isn't enough to drive the F200A in the 45L ported box.

One thing I was thinking, --and JLM Jeff can chime in,-- is whether the TL, ie: whether the line smooths out the impedance bump in the lower end, making it an easier load in Bob's creation, than in Dan's.... I still have the drivers, and did a cut out of Bob's drawing, and they are not as big as I thought, although they are pretty chunky monkeys.

Paul, do you have some pix for us to see of your new speaks?

[Paul_Bui]

Sure Dan, I took several pictures of the FTA-2000s in action.  But wait, this is embarrassing:  I don't know how or have access to a url where I load and post pictures to.

As for the efficiency of the speakers, I follow a minimalist approach, not using the bsc filters that Bob provides with the boxes.  I think doing this keeps the db at the 90 mark.

This evening I also listened to Mahler's Symphony #2 SACD.  Towards the end, the little ClariT drove the FTA2000 towers with authority that is hard to believe.  Orchestra as well as female vocals sounded equally impressive and musical, not even a trace of fatigue that sometimes heard with even my highly regarded SET amp.  Following was the Unplugged CD of Eric Clapton.  His voice and guitar sounded as big as the speakers.  There was a certain bigness to the images that the ClariT reproduced.

[doug s.]

Sure Dan, I took several pictures of the FTA-2000s in action.  But wait, this is embarrassing:  I don't know how or have access to a url where I load and post pictures to...

paul, you can create a gallery here on the audiocircle - yust click the "gallery" link at the top of the page, & follow the instructions re: loading yer pics...

doug s.

[Dmason]

"Bigness" is definitely a word to describe a somehow larger-than-life thing going on with the ClariT. I would pin it down to speaker control. T amps exert iron fisted control over drivers with the designed in feedback loop, this is well established. And battery power provides instantaneous current, bags of the stuff, only magnifying this speaker control. In fact, the battery leads are harnessed directly to the Tripath chip in Vinnie's amp. A tour de force decision on his part.  

 Listen to some Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, my test pilot CD is UFO TOFU and this will REALLY give you an idea of what the hell kindo light-speed stuff we are talking about here, gang. Or Beethoven's 9th, the drum thwacks and full orchestra and choir during "Song of Joy" and you will see what I mean. The entire orchestra, choir, everything is perfectly delineated, and your ears are right there on the podium. You might as well be able to hear the "swish" of the baton. It's THAT good!!! And apparently, getting better.

[JLM]

IMO the transmission line loading does smooth out the impedance curve and makes for a very easy load at the rated efficiency.  Years ago I had three-way I. M. Fried speakers with 8 inch woofer in mass loaded transmission lines that were bigger than the FTA-2000.  Took them to a 160 seat, 20,000 cu. ft. chapel and played organ music to most satisfying levels with my 20 wpc NAD receiver.  Playing the FTA-2000 with a 12 wpc tube amp I could achieve "scary" loud levels in my 11 ft x 19 ft living room.  In neither case did did it seem that I was pushing the amps near clipping.

OTOH in my mind amps should be sized with enough power to "tell" not "ask" the speaker what to do so that proper dynamic response is assured.  This is much more than needed for "normally dynamic" material at everyday playback levels (80 dB or so for most audiophiles I've hung out with).  This difference amounts to 20 - 30 dB of headroom (100 to 1000 times the wattage).  I'm sure that the Clari-T meets the second criteria, but don't see how it can meet the first with any but the most efficient speakers in reproducing life like levels (105 dB is my criteria).  This would explain why Paul could be satisfied with this pairing, but Dan isn't.  Most likely the Clari-T would find itself best suited for reasonably high efficiency bedroom or apartment systems.  

Based all the wonderful traits written about the Clari-T, it's most fustrating for me especially with the just annouced release of v.2 of the battery dAck!

[Dmason]

Good points Jeff. I think with the 200A, I seem to be hearing the amp "asking" the speakers to do. But, when it is plugged into anything of about >92db, it seems to be pretty much telling the speakers what to do. With the "91db" Axiom M40Ti, depending on the recording level of the CD, 5 watts is plenty for non-orchestral stuff....With the Fostex FE-E, and Radians, both about 96db, there is no loss of dynamic range at all, and yesterday, pairing it with a set of +101db Krix 3 way theater horns, it could crack the walls of a 1000 seat recital hall. Sounded amazing, Max flat 30-30KHz, with full dynamic range on some very dynamic stuff as follows:

Respighi "Pines of Rome"
Stravinsky "The Firebird"
Britten "A Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra"

Anyone who knows this material knows it is dynamically pretty over the top. So with the ClariT, or Sonic Impact, the most important factor is in chosing acceptable speakers. As always in audio, if you want louder, get louder speakers, not amp. If you plan on keeping your speakers and listen to orchestral music, anything over 92db and you will be very happy.

[Dmason]

Good points Jeff. I think with the 200A, I seem to be hearing the amp "asking" the speakers to do. But, when it is plugged into anything of about >92db, it seems to be pretty much telling the speakers what to do. With the "91db" Axiom M40Ti, depending on the recording level of the CD, 5 watts is plenty for non-orchestral stuff....With the Fostex FE-E, and Radians, both about 96db, there is no loss of dynamic range at all, and yesterday, pairing it with a set of +101db Krix 3 way theater horns, it could crack the walls of a 1000 seat recital hall. Sounded amazing, Max flat 30-30KHz, with full dynamic range on some very dynamic stuff as follows:

Respighi "Pines of Rome"
Stravinsky "The Firebird"
Britten "A Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra"

Anyone who knows this material knows it is dynamically pretty over the top. So with the ClariT, or Sonic Impact, the most important factor is in chosing acceptable speakers. As always in audio, if you want louder, get louder speakers, not amp. If you plan on keeping your speakers and listen to orchestral music, anything over 92db and you will be very happy.

[Dmason]

Good points Jeff. I think with the 200A, I seem to be hearing the amp "asking" the speakers to do. But, when it is plugged into anything of about >92db, it seems to be pretty much telling the speakers what to do. With the "91db" Axiom M40Ti, depending on the recording level of the CD, 5 watts is plenty for non-orchestral stuff....With the Fostex FE-E, and Radians, both about 96db, there is no loss of dynamic range at all, and yesterday, pairing it with a set of +101db Krix 3 way theater horns, it could crack the walls of a 1000 seat recital hall. Sounded amazing, Max flat 30-30KHz, with full dynamic range on some very dynamic stuff as follows:

Respighi "Pines of Rome"
Stravinsky "The Firebird"
Britten "A Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra"

Anyone who knows this material knows it is dynamically pretty over the top. So with the ClariT, or Sonic Impact, the most important factor is in chosing acceptable speakers. As always in audio, if you want louder, get louder speakers, not amp. If you plan on keeping your speakers and listen to orchestral music, anything over 92db and you will be very happy.

[TheChairGuy]

Man, that TNT reviewer sure liked his Sonic Impact.  The reviewer didn't even use an SLA...which was a HUGELY impactful tweek to the sound of things.

Not that I wasn't thinking that way beforehand, but it sure makes me want to have available a good high-efficiency, single driver or horn speaker for me to put it thru it's paces.

It is an unusually pleasant sounding amp, at any price, on the less than optimum speakers I played it thru.  I imagine those of you with the Vinnie Rossi Clari-T amp, with hi-eff horns, are lovin' life every day.  

$30 + $20 for an SLA and charger....onward, upward and less costly gents  

[corwin99]

I was pretty suprised when i hooked mine up to a pair of (what i thought were mediocre) Klipsch RB-5 MKII speakers i have... they used to sound good to me, but I stopped liking them when i started to hear better speakers. Then I was told that low powered tube amps do wonders for the Klipsch Reference series speakers, so i hooked my Radii KT88 Monoblocks to it, which are not super low powered but they did sound better.. the Little Sonic impact just sounded Great with them though! The KT88's are not SET amps, but there's nothing that they do better than the sonic impact, except that they have more power... at least on the Klipsch speakers.

[Dmason]

Corwin,

There were a couple of AC'ers who hooked up their Carver ZR's with Klipsch Ref and really loved what happened. Synergy again. This is good to know because those speaks are cost effective and deliver good value.

After the Big Krix horns, I would love to hear the ClariT with some "smaller" backhorns like Cain&Cain Bens, or the Fostex Sigma horns. This would be a REAL target, for those of you thinking about optimizing speakers with the TA2024 Tripath amps.

[Harmon]

Hey guys when you hook up a 2.5mm coax(connector on oppesite end of wal-wart) to the T-amp and the wires to a SLA battery how do you know which one of the wires goes on the correct terminal.  Thanks

[corwin99]

Its been mentioned in this thread that the center conductor is goes to the positive. Do not reverse them or your chip goes splat  

Or are you asking how do you know which of the wires is positive? If you are asking that, use a multimeter to find out.

[TheChairGuy]

Harmon,

One of the wires is normally marked on the outside sheath with a stripe on it...indicating positive. Run that to the posisitve tab on the SLA, the non-striped to the negative tab, and you're in business.

[Harmon]

Thanks Corwin, thanks Chair.  

[commited]

hey folks,
My first post here (only just found it), and I have a few ideas which im not sure will work so be gentle
I'm also in Europe, so I dont have the great access to Radioshack etc that you all enjoy!

Now i've decided to buy two of these wonder amps and run them "bi-amped", using my Arcam 8r as a preamp.

I'm going to modify it and re-house it, whilst changing speaker clips for Binding posts, changing headphone jack for a pair of RCAs and changing the wiring inside, and also want to do some other mods to improve the sound bu have a few questions:

1. I was going to use a 5a 13.8v regulated powersupply - http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=231&TabID=1&source=15&WorldID=&doy=22m1 - will this be enough to power the two? I dont really want to mess about with SLA batteries etc as I generally listen to my hifi for about 8hours at a time!
2. I want to take the pot out of the equation as i dont need it (use vol control on pre) - how do I do it and what do i need (read something about shunt regulator but went straight over my head)? I read in this thread that someone was using a pre-amp, but had the pot set to 10 o clock which reduced the distortion (i dont want it to go over the 5w mark really) - so would removing the pot be a bad idea for this reason or would a suitable resistor help with this? I dont really want the hassle of trying to match 2 volume outputs perfectly.
3. I want to use a switch to turn the two on and off rather then the way the pot does it now - how do i do this?
4. The way im planning on bi-amping is to connect the two imputs of the amplifier to the RCA connectors so that i can just use an interconnect between it and the pre-amp - I assume this will work ok - yes?

Sorry if the above is ridiculous/stupid - just a few questions If you dont ask you dont learn  

[TheChairGuy]

Hi commited...and welcome to AudioCircle  

I'll let others more qualified answer #2-4, but I can tell you that I use a 7 aH SLA battery on my one Sonic Impact and get about 30 useable hours from one charge.  Actually, it seems I get over 60 in total, but I hear degradation of the sound quality after 30 hours.  It's so quiet with SLA you really hear ever change in it.  I assume it's because the SLA drifts from 13.8v (full charge) into somehting less and I begin hearing the change at 30 hours.

Anyhow, an SLA is only $10 here and $10 for charger...I can't imagine them being so much more in Europe.  They are all made in China, after all and freight most parts of Europe is no more than to ports in most of the US.

[commited]

Cheers for the reply

I'm looking at about €30 for the battery & another €20 for the charger - which is more then triple the price that you can get a t-amp!

I may upgrade to this in the future though

does anyone know anywhere that has it in stock? I have a friend in the US shipping them to me, but I cant find them in stock anywhere  

[gonefishin]

Hi commited

 
 

does anyone know anywhere that has it in stock?

  I wish  I'm currently waiting on two SI amps from e-cost, they're both on backorder


Here's a nice little project box for the Sonic Impact T-amp. <---no affiliation


   guess I'll have to wait a bit longer  


   cheers


     dan