[mb]

Hi there,

Any AKSA owners on AC listened to the above amps? The reason for this question is that several of us are building a TDA7294 kit for kicks / HT / misc applications. I'd be very interested to hear your comments on these opamp-based amps.

You can sleep easy, Hugh! For all my 2 weeks of tweaking, my TDA kit has only just started to sound reasonable, and there isn't a single area where it's outperforming the AKSA, apart from cost. There's 95% repeatability in being able to identify whether it's the AKSA or the gainclone in the system. I have been very careful in limiting the cost of tweak components to <US$2 max per piece, though. FYI, my AKSA is 90% stock Nirvana55.

Cheers,
mb

[JohnR]

Um, I have heard the Le Amp.

[AKSA]

John,

I've not heard Le Amp (deleting the Frog definite article!), but I have a customer who has and he also has a 100W AKSA.

He speaks highly of the modded Le Amp, saying that it didn't sound wonderful until he'd played with some of the wire and inteconnects inside the case.  I'll reserve judgment on this, as I have not heard it.

But he seems to think that they are quite close, though he feels the 100W AKSA pips it for dynamics and drive.

So, Mervin's comments are nice to hear!  I've played around with the chip amps for many years - the packaging is very appealing - but never found one yet which really delivered the goods.  There is a way of nesting a power IC within the feedback loop of a superior, low current opamp which is reputedly an excellent starting point, but the more powerful chips often use fairly unsophisticted output stages, and I have never seen one with a charge suckout on the drivers.

It all shows, I believe, that the chip amps don't aspire to true high end, and given the price, how could they?  Even the LM12 has its limitations.......

Cheers,

Hugh

[MarinRider]

I have owned a commercial amp using TDA7294s - the Linn LK140 uses two in parallel   . The AKSA (55W or 100W) completely trounces the LK140 for sound quality.

I have also spent a long time tryng to get TDA7294s to sound good, starting with Selectronic's kit (www.selectronic.fr) which is really cheap. Although it's possible to get decent results - similar to the LK140,  for a lot less money - I don't regard them as proper hi-fi.

I suspect than Gainclone etc have done a better job than I did though. Implementation is 90% of the battle.

Dave

[Rom]

Hi all,
I heard the Gaincard, the full yard, from the CD player Flatfish up to the silver speaker wire hook up to a B&W speaker. What I could say is that the sound is so sterile to my ears, it's sound so clean that seems to me along with my friends thats the soul of the music was strip of the source.

When I heard AKSA for the first time, hook up to a focal DIY speaker, It sound so good that,I order it the next day along with my friends. It's so musically involving that I prefer over the gaincard.
Other may have diffrent opinion so it's really up to someones ear to judge what he or she likes.
Just sharing what I have heard and added a few of my 2 cents.

Cheers
Rom

[mb]

Thanks Rom, Dave, Hugh,

The comments on the Gaincard audition were interesting. With my limited (3 weeks!) experience with the TDA7294 (as used in Linn, NorH, etc), I concur with the comments. It's been difficult coaxing 'air' and 'musicality' from the amp. However, if I had to build a discrete amp from scratch, I'd be nowhere after 3 weeks. Instead, I now have a NorH-clone that  cost <US$50 (excl. power supply) that sounds, say, 40% of an AKSA. To me, it sounds slewrate limited (just can't get the top end and microdynamics moving), but balance and sound is not half as bad as the descriptions you give for the Linn and Gaincard. Most likely because I've tweaked it to my preference..

Now back to listening to my AKSA 55N...