Valve Digital hybrid: feasible???

skrivis · « **Reply #20 on:** 2 Dec 2005, 02:57 pm »

Quote from: WEEZ

skrivis,

nobody blows smoke up my...

(I still think icky is funny )

WEEZ

Ok, so Cardas is spewing snake oil. Better?

If you just have to have higher quality cables; I recommend Blue Jeans Cable. http://www.bluejeanscable.com/

They're excellent quality, yet not very expensive. No snake oil or pseudo-science involved. I think their build quality is an excellent match for the build quality of AVA equipment.

Icky's funny? How about yucky? hehe

avahifi · « **Reply #21 on:** 2 Dec 2005, 06:02 pm »

I just had a good look at the Blue Jeans Cable web site.

I am very impressed with what they say and the products they offer.

It is the first cable vendor I have see that is completely free of bs and snake oil.

Highly recommended.

Frank Van Alstine

avahifi · « **Reply #22 on:** 2 Dec 2005, 06:07 pm »

I just had a good look at the Blue Jeans Cable web site.

I am very impressed with what they say and the products they offer.

It is the first cable vendor I have see that is completely free of bs and snake oil.

Highly recommended.

Frank Van Alstine

warnerwh · « **Reply #23 on:** 2 Dec 2005, 10:00 pm »

Mark this day down in history. I thought I'd never see the day Frank recommending any cable vendors products.

I should mention to that if you need cables there's a guy on Ebay that sells good quality Canare cables with either rca's or XLR's in any length or color you want. I think I paid about 32.00 a pair for my balanced cables Canare L-46es cable and Blue Jeans wants 24.00 each for 3' cables.

An excellent speaker cable is Canare 4S11. Buy it in bulk at 65 cents a foot and use: http://cgi.ebay.com/KnuKonceptz-BFA-type-Banana-Plugs-4-8awg-Speaker-Wire_W0QQitemZ5836351087QQcategoryZ32838QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

These banana plugs fit nice and tight and are easy to terminate if you can handle a screwdriver.

ricmon · « **Reply #24 on:** 2 Dec 2005, 10:54 pm »

These guys also have great cabels without the BS. I think they fit into the AVA philosiphy just as Blue Jeans does.

http://www.latinternational.com/index.php/home/home%20-%20about%20lat.html

warnerwh · « **Reply #25 on:** 2 Dec 2005, 11:54 pm »

Ricmon: They're not actually snake oil free. As soon as I see power cables for sale I must be suspect. The bottom line is in the real world the sound difference between intelligently designed cables is nil or close enough to it that money should be spent on room treatment or music or maybe a digital equalizer. Amplitude variations are far more important than most people realize and have very interesting affects on sounds.

avahifi · « **Reply #26 on:** 4 Dec 2005, 06:09 pm »

Yup, as soon as I see advertisements for good sounding power cords I scream "SNAKE OIL" and run the other way.

If someone can explain to me how adding 6 feet of wondercable in series with 300 feet of 22 gauge primary winding of plain old copper wire in the transformer of your unit can make any possible difference at all (explain without using fake science bs and purple prose) then I will be interested.

The power cord is an extension of the wires from your transformer. Period. Its ability to improve the sound of your system is ZERO. Period.

If it contains a built in RFI filter it might help a little bit, but a separate filter box will work better in almost all cases and be a lot less expensive. Remember too that the primary winding of the power transformer is a big RFI filter inductor in the first place.

All this money spent on snake oil and none on good electrical engineering. Its a sad state of affairs.

Frank Van Alstine

Charles Calkins · « **Reply #27 on:** 4 Dec 2005, 06:20 pm »

Frank:
Filter box? No comprende? What is a filter box? Something like a power conditioner?

Cheers
Charlie

AKA dumdum

eric the red · « **Reply #28 on:** 4 Dec 2005, 06:28 pm »

Quote from: avahifi

Yup, as soon as I see advertisements for good sounding power cords I scream "SNAKE OIL" and run the other way.

If someone can explain to me how adding 6 feet of wondercable in series with 300 feet of 22 gauge primary winding of plain old copper wire in the transformer of your unit can make any possible difference at all (explain without using fake science bs and purple prose) then I will be interested.

Not to mention the size and quality of the wire in most homes that leads up to the AC outlet etc etc etc.

avahifi · « **Reply #29 on:** 4 Dec 2005, 06:42 pm »

Filter box, I mean a power line surge and RFI protector, available at any computer store for about $50 or less.

FVA

modular747 · « **Reply #30 on:** 4 Dec 2005, 07:23 pm »

Quote from: avahifi

just hear an Ultra DAC driving an Ultra SL preamp driving an Ultra Phase Inverter driving a pair of Ultimate 70 tube amplifiers

Frank Van Alstine

Have you considered making an all new all tube power amp or is the cost of tooling new output transformers prohibitive?

Charles Calkins · « **Reply #31 on:** 5 Dec 2005, 01:56 am »

Quote from: avahifi

To me the sound of any class D amp I have heard is like the flavor of prime rib reheated in a microwave oven

Frank:
I don't want to get into a "mine is better than yours" type of BS but I have to say this.
The combination of your T7ECR preamp and CIAudios D-200 class D amps. along with Alex Peychev's modded to the max Phillips SACD 1000 have made my VSA VR-4 GEN III HSE speakers take on a whole new musical presentation. I am a very happy audioholic!! I've been a serious listner for more than 50 years and this is the best system I've had.
Can I make things sound better? Perhaps but at what cost?

Yo Frank!!
Maybe next summer I'll pack up my D-200's and pay you a visit. I'd like to compare them to your best amp.

Have a very merry christmas and a happy new year.

Cheers
Charlie

skrivis · « **Reply #32 on:** 5 Dec 2005, 02:41 pm »

Quote from: avahifi

Filter box, I mean a power line surge and RFI protector, available at any computer store for about $50 or less.

FVA

Tripplite has an "Ultra" series of power strips that includes LC filters for each socket. Surge suppression is via MOVs.

I've used these for a long time for computer equipment, and recently picked up a bunch on ebay for $10 ea., so I now have one on my stereo too.

http://www.tripplite.com/products/suppressors/isobar.cfm

Note than I think Tripplite UPSes are lousy. APC is a better bet for small UPSes.

I'm also using OneAC isolation transformers for some of my computer equipment. You can often get these cheaply on Ebay. I've seen people talking about using them for audio equipment, but I don't think that's worthwhile unless your gear has switch-mode power supplies.

skrivis · « **Reply #33 on:** 5 Dec 2005, 02:50 pm »

Quote from: modular747

Quote from: avahifi
just hear an Ultra DAC driving an Ultra SL preamp driving an Ultra Phase Inverter driving a pair of Ultimate 70 tube amplifiers

Frank Van Alstine

Have you considered making an all new all tube power amp or is the cost of tooling new output transformers prohibitive?

Output transformer design is almost a black art. Getting good transformers might be hard.

I'd also speculate that the hybrid AVA amps are capable of outperforming an all tube amp anyway.

skrivis · « **Reply #34 on:** 5 Dec 2005, 03:12 pm »

Quote from: warnerwh

Mark this day down in history. I thought I'd never see the day Frank recommending any cable vendors products.

I should mention to that if you need cables there's a guy on Ebay that sells good quality Canare cables with either rca's or XLR's in any length or color you want. I think I paid about 32.00 a pair for my balanced cables Canare L-46es cable and Blue Jeans wants 24.00 each for 3' cables.

An excellent speaker cable is Canare 4S11. Buy it in bulk at 65 cents a foot and use: http://cgi.ebay.co ...

Blue Jeans uses the proper tools to terminate their cables. I don't know if that's true of J. Random Ebay Seller.

You can get inexpensive cables from Parts Express that will likely do what you need. I only brought up Blue Jeans because they _are_ of better quality. (Materials quality anyway.) They probably won't sound any different. Blue Jeans is that rarity - an honest cable vendor. hehe

I've got one of their 75 ohm cables and it's very nicely made. Everyone tells me they stand behind their products too. I think they're well worth supporting if you want "better" quality cables.

I'd also say that their prices are not unreasonable. I don't think they're making huge amounts of profit.

dlherman · « **Reply #35 on:** 7 Dec 2005, 06:58 am »

Hello, the name is Doug and this is my first post in the AVA forum. I've owned AVA gear for a half dozen years or so and love it, but this isn't the reason I'm writing.

I own a pair of Newform Research R645s modified for a "digital" setup. I gutted the passive crossovers and bought the somewhat highly regarded Panasonic SAXR45 digital amplifier and Behringer DCX2496 digital active crossover from Newform Research.

Bottom line? An interesting exercise but disappointing results. The SAXR45 - despite it's "cult" status - is one musically dead piece of gear. It's clear and detailed and...ummmmm...it's clear and detailed. But it has no life or emotion.

I listened to the Tact equipment and was somewhat less underwhelmed.

Yamaha has a new digital amplifier. It's small and sexy. They seem to like the fact that it's efficient and runs cool. They probably like the reduced manufacturing costs also. But I'm not very concerned about the power consumption of my audio gear.

skrivis · « **Reply #36 on:** 7 Dec 2005, 01:46 pm »

Quote from: dlherman

But I'm not very concerned about the power consumption of my audio gear.

It's especially irrelevant with AVA gear because you don't have to leave it turned on all the time like you do with some less than stable boutique stuff.

Watson · « **Reply #37 on:** 7 Dec 2005, 04:33 pm »

Quote from: modular747

Have you considered making an all new all tube power amp or is the cost of tooling new output transformers prohibitive?

I'm also interested in hearing Frank's answer to this question.

avahifi · « **Reply #38 on:** 7 Dec 2005, 07:25 pm »

Have we considered making a new all tube power amplifier?

We are thinking about it and have done some price studies already.

It would be essentially an even better version of the Ultimate 70 in a much modernized chassis. The input jacks would move to the back, the power switch to the front. The outputs would provide for all for transformer impedances (4,8,16, and G), black powercoat finish. The chassis design would provide for the audio borad to be mounted under the chassis (parts down) with only the 6GH8A tubes sticking up thru appropriate circular holes in the chassis. There would be simple pin jacks provided for bias setting rather than the 8-pin sockets used now. There would not be a cover cage as the new board location isolates the high voltage stuff.

Layout suggestions and feature and function suggestions are welcomed.

Price? A lot depends upon the transformers. The Triode Dynaclone transformers work really well, especially the power transformer and choke. We might want to go with an even better output transformer from Magnaquests, and that would raise the price.

Price, I guess about $1500 for a finished little state of the art amp at 32 watts per channel. Using two of them in the bridge mode with our new Ultra bridge provides drop dead musical performance and adequate power for most anything. You gotta hear it to beleve it.

Frank Van Alstine

Watson · « **Reply #39 on:** 7 Dec 2005, 08:01 pm »

Sounds great! I think that would be a killer product, and the price is good.