maybe tubes are not that great? I do not know! HELP!

[richieb]

I owned the QS horn monos a few years ago, nice well built amps. I could see another pair when they come up used. Not single ended but they are a good push pull amp and for our horns they are quiet, a must.

Tarheel, those QS full function pre's look to be beasts!

[richieb]

Wdecho is right on the simpler circuit the better which is why single ended tubes sound so nice and a look inside the First Watt boxes proves the same with SS, at least for NP. The FW chassis make the amps look massive at first glance but there ain't much inside. Running Class A forces a calculated area of heat sink cooling giving the First Watt amps a fairly large footprint.

Now if you want simple and and a truly amazing sounding design with a virtually Black background look at chip amps from the likes of Peter Daniels out of Canada. I am currently running one in rotation with various other tube amps that uses the LM 3875 chip. High quality parts, Caddock, Riken, Noble, Cardas, copper heat sinks. Looks like a big all aluminum cigar box, perfectly put together and will knock your socks off with KHorns.

I've got a single ended EL84 on the way and once I confirm I'm satisfied with it I may have Peter Daniels build me his all out assault chip amp with huge outboard power supply and best internals. Still a simple circuit taken up a couple notches.

[Dr Morbius]

As I type this, I'm listening to my Cornscala's with my Scott 299C tube amp. Couldn't be happier than a pig in poop - except in the near future I will most probably be ordering a pair of Jubilee's for my 299C. I cannot imagine how that will sound. Just can't. But I'm hoping it will be awesome

[2Bmusic]

Quicksilver horn mono's arrived... review ( as it were) coming in the next few days

 

 

and I had a really big surprise that I will tell you about... HINT *   ......a non-klipsh audio shop...

Edited April 2, 2016 by 2Bmusic

[Mallette]

As an extension, do we really think that a pre-amp is going to do more harm or good than all the proceeding ones? It can't cure anything.

 

TRVTH

 

Dave

[Fjd]

 

There is no counting the number of the old but very good NE5532 op amps the sound is mixed with in the studio.  

 

 

 

A couple of years ago I posted several of these projects to the forum; however, I had bought a parts kit and modified my Creek OBH-11 headphone amp and replaced the NE5532 with the LME49720, upgraded a few of the coupling capacitors and resistors and I was somewhat caught off-guard with the results in how significant of an improvement.  It seemed like the noise floor was lowered and a 'veil' of haze was lifted from the music. 

 

Sadly, the LME49720 was also on this list of parts, along with the LM3875, scheduled for obsolescence and to be discontinued.  I know that I have a few other pieces of gear with the NE5532; therefore, I guess that I need to start thinking of experiments that I may want to try and buy a sleeve of each discontinued item. 

 

Given the experience with the Cheek OBH-11, along with a schematic and a basic understanding of how a circuit works, I think there is a lot of opportunity to take some of these types of parts and upgrade some of the lower-tier audio gear that can be picked up for a few dollars on the used market and pennies on the dollar of the cost when new.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Edited April 2, 2016 by Fjd

[derrickdj1]

The old debate on tubes vs solid state will continue.  The article pointed out some good facts on the advantage and disadvantage of the amps.  Both type of amps can be a great choice and being well educated on gear is always good.  It comes down to what you like.  There is nothing like glowing tubes in the system.  I have hear some extent tubes and SS and sound alike.  I even once mistaken a SS amp for a tube amp.  It was an old Sansui.  Klipsch speakers allow one to go with either unlike some other brand of speakers.

Edited April 2, 2016 by derrickdj1

[eth2]

Forget what you read and believe what you hear with our own ears would be my advise...in reality there is plenty of tube and SS gear that sounds great...tubes do thing SS can't and SS does things tubes can't.... It's all about trade offs and what is impotantbto YOU and YOUR ears! Trust your ears!

 

I feel like I just heard god say there is no difference between heaven and hell. Are there SS VRDs? I think not!!

Who are you and what have you done with Craig Ostby???

[2Bmusic]

well bad news.... bad news indeed!        

I am truly broken hearted!

 

one amp works ( dead silent & sounds good) , the other hums and does not. ( It does play music for a second after being turned off)

 

 I just got off the phone with Mike from quicksilver. He gave me a few ideas of things to check, nothing seems wrong.  He has no clue as to what the problem is.   But it does not play and has 60 cycle hum.  

 

I was so looking forward to this!  I will spend a few hours comparing one side to the other with a DVM.  I swapped tubes, different sockets, power cords, receptacles  etc.   No villain has been found.   DAMN THE LUCK!

 

If anyone wants to call and see if we can fix this that would be great. If not they go back  on Monday.......and I save up for a pass labs 30.8.

 

 

 

thanks,

Dave

337-591-0910

[2Bmusic]

Now for some good news.

I was out of town, and while I had a few minutes stopped into an Audio HIFI place.    Several rooms set up with equipment from the $1,500 to $40,000 range.  I could not believe my ears!   Seriously, I am not exaggerating... the $35,000 set up sounded worse than the $1,500 by a long shot.   My ears have become to attuned to the distortion free KHorns, I have no words.  Simply amazing and shocked by what I heard and did not hear!

 

 

KLIPSCHORNS  RULE ALL OTHERS ARE PRETEND!!!

[Fjd]

well bad news.... bad news indeed!        

I am truly broken hearted!

 

one amp works ( dead silent & sounds good) , the other hums and does not. ( It does play music for a second after being turned off)

 

 I just got off the phone with Mike from quicksilver. He gave me a few ideas of things to check, nothing seems wrong.  He has no clue as to what the problem is.   But it does not play and has 60 cycle hum.  

 

I was so looking forward to this!  I will spend a few hours comparing one side to the other with a DVM.  I swapped tubes, different sockets, power cords, receptacles  etc.   No villain has been found.   DAMN THE LUCK!

 

If anyone wants to call and see if we can fix this that would be great. If not they go back  on Monday.......and I save up for a pass labs 30.8.

 

 

 

I'm sure there will be others that come along that are well-versed in troubleshooting and can outline various steps; however, I bought a used tube stereo amplifier about three years ago that demonstrated similar symptoms out of one channel where I got a loud hum and no music.  In my situation I took the bottom off the amplifier and noticed that during shipping one of the leads of a capacitor had broken off from the solder joint.  I soldered it back together and both channels worked fine.  

 

Just never know how shipping will impact an amplifier.  In another instance I bought a used solid state amplifier and during shipping, one of the MUR860 bridge rectifiers broke connection with the circuit board, although it may have been related to the small heat sink becoming unattached too.  I replaced the MUR860 diode and attached the heat sink properly and the amplifier checked out and worked fine.

Edited April 2, 2016 by Fjd

[oscarsear]

well bad news.... bad news indeed!        

I am truly broken hearted!

 

one amp works ( dead silent & sounds good) , the other hums and does not. ( It does play music for a second after being turned off)

 

 I just got off the phone with Mike from quicksilver. He gave me a few ideas of things to check, nothing seems wrong.  He has no clue as to what the problem is.   But it does not play and has 60 cycle hum.  

 

I was so looking forward to this!  I will spend a few hours comparing one side to the other with a DVM.  I swapped tubes, different sockets, power cords, receptacles  etc.   No villain has been found.   DAMN THE LUCK!

 

If anyone wants to call and see if we can fix this that would be great. If not they go back  on Monday.......and I save up for a pass labs 30.8.

 

 

 

thanks,

Dave

337-591-0910

Once I ventured into tubes with much anticipation for the Khorns and the experience left me disappointed.  I chose Cary product and immediately noticed the lack of bass and started the 'tube rolling' quest to improve the rig.  Some tubes introduced hum, others did not.... none delivered the bass........  and they were all expensive.  I shifted to Accuphase on the advice of others here and have precisely what I wanted, performance and reliability.  If you enjoy constantly toying and tweaking a system perhaps tubes can find you the best solution.  I would rather turn it on and have it work flawlessly each and every time.  You can also mix tubes and SS for the best each can offer.  Hope you get your set up exactly the way you want.

[derrickdj1]

I'm sticking with my tube hybird, tubes in the preamp and SS in the rear.  Works great and no adjustments.  I like just enjoying and not so much tinkering and the tubes aren't real expensive.

[Mallette]

Now for some good news.

I was out of town, and while I had a few minutes stopped into an Audio HIFI place.    Several rooms set up with equipment from the $1,500 to $40,000 range.  I could not believe my ears!   Seriously, I am not exaggerating... the $35,000 set up sounded worse than the $1,500 by a long shot.   My ears have become to attuned to the distortion free KHorns, I have no words.  Simply amazing and shocked by what I heard and did not hear!

 

 

KLIPSCHORNS  RULE ALL OTHERS ARE PRETEND!!!

Not very often someone with 56 posts gets this, but

 

TRVTH

Dave

[2Bmusic]

 

Now for some good news.

I was out of town, and while I had a few minutes stopped into an Audio HIFI place.    Several rooms set up with equipment from the $1,500 to $40,000 range.  I could not believe my ears!   Seriously, I am not exaggerating... the $35,000 set up sounded worse than the $1,500 by a long shot.   My ears have become to attuned to the distortion free KHorns, I have no words.  Simply amazing and shocked by what I heard and did not hear!

 

 

KLIPSCHORNS  RULE ALL OTHERS ARE PRETEND!!!

Not very often someone with 56 posts gets this, but

 

TRVTH

Dave

 

I guess you are saying there is truth in my comment?

[2Bmusic]

Well 2 hours later and Viola!   Cold soldered joint on bias resistor to one of the EL p/p tubes.

Sounds very good.  Better than my Advantage 1030.... not sure.   Playing Bella Flecks Cosmic hippo, the base is so strong that I had to turn it down with equalizer on the iTunes control panel!

 

Yes, I like it!

[Mallette]

 

 

Now for some good news.

I was out of town, and while I had a few minutes stopped into an Audio HIFI place.    Several rooms set up with equipment from the $1,500 to $40,000 range.  I could not believe my ears!   Seriously, I am not exaggerating... the $35,000 set up sounded worse than the $1,500 by a long shot.   My ears have become to attuned to the distortion free KHorns, I have no words.  Simply amazing and shocked by what I heard and did not hear!

 

 

KLIPSCHORNS  RULE ALL OTHERS ARE PRETEND!!!

Not very often someone with 56 posts gets this, but

 

TRVTH

Dave

 

I guess you are saying there is truth in my comment?

 

Yes.  And I don't hand those out very often.

 

Dave

[Fjd]

On ‎3‎/‎21‎/‎2016 at 10:08 PM, WMcD said:

Power amps and the like are one subject. Not addressed here.

But I still wonder about the chain of electronics e.g. microphone amps, mixers, etc., which were used to produce recording, in history, we admire or maybe less so. This is all low level processing.

Over the years the equipment is tube or transistor, operating in Class A. The equipment uses capacitors and sometimes transformers which are subject to love and hate. But that is what we've got just before the signal is stored and distributed, by any number of means.

For example, you can say that tubes or transistors or caps are good or bad in my pre-amp. Yet the signal has probably been processed through multiple stages of equipment using the devices which are praised or vilified. That can't be un-done.

As an extension, do we really think that a pre-amp is going to do more harm or good than all the proceeding ones? It can't cure anything.

If here is one last stage of small amplification using similar devices and topology in our living room, how much can we hope to accomplish?

WMcD

 

 

 

To borrow an iconic phrase from Ten Bears, "there is iron in your words."  Yep, I just got done watching the movie "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and decided to read a little.

 

You sure outlined way too many variables to even think about all of the potential impacts when considering the audio reproduction chain as the initial capture of the performance all the way to the output from the speaker in a home listening environment.

 

In my experience at the “home” level, for a well-implemented system, well-engineered circuits constructed into amplifiers with quality parts of the appropriate specifications, whether tube or solid state, will appear to exhibit more similarities than differences on my Klipschorn implementation. 

 

Of course, I try to select components that are actually capable of doing the job asked of it in that I would never ask my two watt single-ended triode amplifier to drive the Klipschorns to levels that can fill Carnegie Hall.

 

I do find many things about the “music simulation” experience very interesting and I do firmly believe that the ear (even an “untrained” ear) can detect very small differences that seem very inconsequential on the surface; and I certainly cannot find fault with those that just use their ears and go with what provides the listening experience they are looking for. 

 

However, from another perspective, although the ear can detect very small differences, the brain may NOT exactly know what aspect of the music simulation experience to attribute the difference.  While my ears may make judgments based on my “feelings” during the music simulation, I expect my brain to reason from principles the specific, as best as I can determine, “why” rather than immediately jump to a poorly reasoned anecdotal view.

 

Lately I’ve been trying to match components (whether tube or solid state) that have very low noise floors and low distortion levels, specifications not solely achieved through high levels of negative feedback; and have as much of the gain up front as possible and the less gain at the end of the audio gear chain in order to try to maximize the S/N of the system and avoid attenuating amplified "noise" and “distortion” at the end of the audio gear chain.  Of course, all of this on highly efficient Klipschorn speakers.

 

Although I’m still a few months away, next on deck is what appears to be a well-engineered line stage developed on the DIYAudio forum using a 4P1L tube that is actually a pentode tube but has direct heated filaments and wired as a triode resulting in a very linear tube with very low noise levels for the line stage circuit.  

 

The 4P1L tube line stage will provide 7dB of gain and I plan to see how it matches up with my First Watt F3 amplifier that has 12.5dB of gain.  This line stage is not necessarily an easy implementation as the 4P1L can be very microphonic, but once the various “triggers” that cause a tube to ring are engineered out of the implementation and the 4P1L is wired as a triode, it looks like it will be a line stage that meets the current criteria of low noise and low distortion.   

 

Just because one tube amplifier in one system resulted in “big-old-fat-tubey” bass, regardless of what my brain may initially try to tell me, it doesn’t mean that every tube amplifier will result in the same experience.  With a well-engineered circuit, it may just be a crappy transformer was used in the build that saturates too quickly on low frequencies.

 

In the same manner, just because one tube amplifier in one system resulted in a “surreal, emotional” experience, doesn’t mean in another system that experience can be duplicated.  The same thing appears to go for solid state too.  

 

Yep, most of us want it all, but sometimes decisions about trade-offs and compromises can be very insightful.

[2Bmusic]

 

 

 

Now for some good news.

I was out of town, and while I had a few minutes stopped into an Audio HIFI place.    Several rooms set up with equipment from the $1,500 to $40,000 range.  I could not believe my ears!   Seriously, I am not exaggerating... the $35,000 set up sounded worse than the $1,500 by a long shot.   My ears have become to attuned to the distortion free KHorns, I have no words.  Simply amazing and shocked by what I heard and did not hear!

 

 

KLIPSCHORNS  RULE ALL OTHERS ARE PRETEND!!!

Not very often someone with 56 posts gets this, but

 

TRVTH

Dave

 

I guess you are saying there is truth in my comment?

 

Yes.  And I don't hand those out very often.

 

Dave

 

Thank you for the compliment! 

 

In full disclosure... I have been familiar with Distortion free equipment since I graduated the Navy Electronics Course Equivalent back in 1976.  My final paper was on Klipschorns and related.    So.... only 50 some odd posts but a lifetime of experience....... Just saying...

[Mallette]

Hadn't posted one of those in months...then you and Gil in a single thread.  Excellent thread well worth reading.

 

Dave