[lonewolfny42]

Hugh....

...what worries me is that generally the better the product, the worse the sales!!

Well...I hope your wrong about that....but it's a tough economic climate out there now....still...

As for Summer....NY didn't have much this year...cloudy..wet...mild...with a few August weeks of heat and humidity...and now its almost over....soon to be Labor Day......oh well.

Best to you and yours....and keep up the creative edge.

                 Chris

[bluesky]

Hi Hugh

Always my pleasure, as you know I have been having some character building adventures of late, but hopefully all will be well soon and I can get stuck back into building work again.

Lastly, whatever happened to the Daksa, I assumed you have moved onto other projects?

Ian

[AKSA]

Folks,

Wonderful thing for Aspen:  A new forum, just for Aspen, has been created at DIYaudio.com along with several other manufacturers (Pass Labs has had one for some years!).

This development is courtesy of the founder and mods of DIYaudio, thanks guys.  I recently discovered that the founder of DIYaudio, Jason, is an Aussie, and incredibly lives just a couple of suburbs from me!!

Here is the direct link:  http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=86

I will keep this forum at AC for the forseeable future, but DIYaudio has much greater traffic and you are all very welcome to make comment on one, or other, or both!

Ian,


Some time back, a couple of years ago, Ben and I did a DAC design.  However, at about this time the non-oversampling DACs became available at low cost from Hong Kong, and we decided that since the cost was going to be in the thousands of dollars, it would not be competitive, and despite its cutting edge technology, I reluctantly decided to drop it.

Cheers,

Hugh

[LM]

Hi Hugh,

It does seem a little quiet around here at the moment compared with the rather intense input at the DIY forum you mention above.    I've had little inclination to post at either place as I have rarely ever used headphones and I'm basking in the highly refined SPL output of the Soraya 09 at every chance I get with nothing much to add beyond my existing comments on the 09 thread.  Must start forcing myself to think about a GK2/Hawk or possibly a TT upgrade at some some point.  I say forcing as I am genuinely content with the CD side of my system at the moment.  So anything exciting happening at Aspen re amp or pre-amp development at the moment that I don't need to know about? 

[AKSA]

Hi Folks,

Noisy in here....  I'm beginning to suffer hearing damage!  Quelle horeur!!

Has anyone here seen the beginnings of my headphone amp on DIYaudio, a freebie design for which we are about to begin the layout?

I may in fact offer a commercial product in time, who knows?

Cheers,

Hugh

[bluesky]

Hi Hugh

I am fascinated by your new choke based power supply.  What are the advantages of using a choke?  I assume better power regulation as well as a reduction in ripple.  Chokes have long been used in tube amps and Jim Hagerman uses them in his high end designs and I applaud you for taking power supplies one step further.  It must also equate to better sound and I assume that this must be audible to even us philistines!

Have you thought of making these available to say, someone who might be building a Lifeforce 55 and wanted to max it out (when they grow up!)?

Cheers

Ian

[AKSA]

Ian,

These are common mode chokes, a bit like 1:1 transformers.

This is an ultraspec power supply, and is only viable on the top spec Soraya retail amps.  On the LF series I will continue to offer the very good resistor based power supply, not quite as good, but a lot cheaper!

Cheers,

Hugh

[bluesky]

Hi Hugh

So they act like a filter in addition to the caps?  I noticed that there seemed to be an updated version in some of the pictures posted compared to the "old" power supply with a different PCB to the original.  If this is this so, are there any significant advantages or is it more like a variation on a theme situation?

Power supplies are where the action starts and any reduction in noise or improvements go right through the rest of the amp, I believe anyway!  I am just interested more than anything else and thought it never hurts to ask dumb questions to keep up with all the changes over time.

Ian

[AKSA]

Indeed, Ian,

It's a new pcb, built to accommodate the chokes.

Hugh