Colin Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 Excellent review! Great information Foggy! I have long thought that many cheap digital amplifiers and lots of small cheap drivers in tall, thin actively powered line driver arrays might eventually be the cost/performance king combination. If I were Klipsch, I would be thinking in this direction. Each 4 driver with its own 30-watt digital amplifier. Maybe modular loudspeakers with preset switch able crossovers. Buy one speaker, leave it set at full range. Buy two, switch it to bass, excluding the mids and highs. Buy a third, flip the switch, exclude the mids and lows, add it as a high-end unit, stack them in the corners, six feet high! Daddy dee, I would love to hear more about how the Sonic Impact or Teac sounded with the low cost Toshiba player over your classic Klipsch corner Khorns. Didnt I see a Dyna-something center channel adapter at your place? Wouldnt that work great with this three-channel amplifier? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 ---------------- On 3/18/2005 10:34:45 AM minn_male42 wrote: power consumption ratings on most consumer and some professional equipment is the "nominal" or average rating - not the maximum power draw... ---------------- Ah...good one - that must be it. Otherwise - A miracle they call it. You aint seen nothin' yet. We got Pepsi in the Andes And Mcdonalds in Tibet. Yosemite's been turned into a golf course For the **** And the Dead Sea Is alive with Rap. It's a miracle! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 "Did you find yourself surprised at the quality of sound coming out of this little beast?" On an absolute scale not really. The Tripath based amps are known to be good sounding and because they are so tightly integrated they sort of give the manufacturers that use them less chances to screw up then compared against a typical analog amp designed from scratch. It of course helps that with the horns we don't really need huge amounts of power and also that my speakers give it a very flat impedance. The smaller Tripaths seem like they may be current limited so they might not handle widely swinging impedance loads all that well. I was suprised at really how decently built the thing is for what it sells for. Not rock solid by any means but not a piece of junk either. And if someone wanted to play with a Tripath amp certainly a great buy to do so. The TK2050 evaluation boards (same chip the Teac uses) cost $320 from Tripath and that doesn't have any case or a power supply. You are basically getting two boards like this in the Teac, with a PS and a case for less then a 1/3 the cost. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daddy Dee Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 Shawn, Thanks for your take on that. I hadn't realized what it would cost to acquire the eval board from Tripath. That is pretty cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Reed Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 Just ordered another one. I guess they'll be my poor man's "monoblocks". Tony Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBryan Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 I've also been looking into Class D and other Chip amps lately and a friend recently gave me a Sonic Impact amp to play with. I've been listening to it through a pr of Klipsch Epic C-3s and while I wouldn't mistake it for a nice SET or P/P tube amp, it sounds pretty darn good for what it is. I can't really make any comparisons until I've listened to it a while longer but I can say that its the nicest $30 amp I've heard. I'm hoping to replace the Khorn's top end with a pr of Oris 200 front-loading horns. The idea is to run the Oris horns with a variety of SET amps and the Khorn's bass bin with a 100 watt (or so) amp that can be mounted under the Oris' back chamber to support the speakers. I've found a few tripath and Gainclone amp kits that with a beefier power supply should fit the bill nicely. They're small, don't get particularly hot, are extremely efficient and a lot of reviewers claim that they sound similar to SET which suggests a good match for my amps. Besides, I can build or buy an enclosure to suit my needs and install a nice pot and the xover inside the chassis. Best of all - - they're reasonably inexpensive if not down right cheap! Some of the Gainclone kits I've found can be viewed at... http://www.audiosector.com/lm4780.shtml and... http://www.chipamp.com/lm4780.shtml The tripaths look most suited to my needs - here's a couple... http://www.41hz.com/main.aspx?pageID=88 and... http://www.lcaudio.com/index.php?page=70 and finally here... http://www.hypex.nl/ All the kits are a fairly straight-forward build and all you add is the transformer, chassis, terminations and wire for the most part. IMO, these kits offer a great price/performance ratio. There's plenty more folks and companies selling kits. Of course, if you can source all the parts, you can go to tripath.com and order only the PCB boards. That'd be the least-expensive option. Have fun - Bryan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBryan Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 Correction - I think you have to be in business to source the boards from tripath.com at a decent price. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daddy Dee Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 ---------------- On 3/18/2005 10:51:02 AM Colin wrote: Daddy dee, I would love to hear more about how the Sonic Impact or Teac sounded with the low cost Toshiba player over your classic Klipsch corner Khorns. Didnt I see a Dyna-something center channel adapter at your place? Wouldnt that work great with this three-channel amplifier? ---------------- Colin, Well, I haven't done much lately with the SI and haven't put it in with the Toshiba player. My take on the sound is that while at first the SI sounds really detailed, to my ears it starts sounding on the bright side after listening for a while. The Teac is smooth top to bottom. The Teac is a really easy path to good sound. It can be bested, of course, but as a bang for the buck champ, it's a winner. You just need to make a trip to Arkansas to do some listening and trout fishing. Maybe camp out here to do some on location Peach reviewing. Yes, I've got that Dynaco QD2 unit which derives a center and surround channels from a two channel amp. The Teac wouldn't work downstream from the QD2, but the Teac would be a slam dunk match for use with the PWK minibox circuit, since it can derive a center line level from line level left and right.... then feed all three into the Teac. The Dynaco wouldn't work in that situation. What makes it interesting is putting out three speaker level signals from two speaker level signals... making a center channel amp unnecessary. I'd add that it is less satisfactory to derive a center channel. What it puts out for the center should be directed to the surround L and R. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 Bryan, "The tripaths look most suited to my needs - here's a couple... http://www.41hz.com/main.aspx?pageID=88 and... http://www.lcaudio.com/index.php?page=70 and finally here... http://www.hypex.nl/" Only the first link is actually a Tripath based design. There are many other types of class D/digital/switching amps out there that don't use Tripath chips in them. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erukian Posted March 18, 2005 Author Share Posted March 18, 2005 from what i've read from audiocircles and the diyforums, that the Teac's sound, stock, is very very good. Some people let it unseat their $500-1000 amps, but only the daring do that because nobody wants to feel like they spent 700 on an amp then have a $100 amp sound better. The sonic impact is known for it's powerful mids and it's detailed highs, sometimes over-detailed according to a lot of people. Once you mod all the caps, and hook the SI up to a nice high quality SLA battery, then the high's back off and your bass response comes back up. Essentially becoming a stock teac. But even with the teac, there's always room for improvement, replace caps with higher ones, i mean, where in audio does replacing caps not yeild better quality? Basically i've learned that the main difference between the Tripath chips is just the power output, some can do 500 watts, the SI does 5-6 watts. But it's handling the audio with the same technology, because it IS a chip. So the actual fidelity difference seems to lie in the power you give the amp, and the components that are in the setup. -Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBryan Posted March 18, 2005 Share Posted March 18, 2005 Shawn, You're right. I knew the Hypex UDC amp wasn't a tripath but I'm wasn't sure about the Zap amp. Its a pulse amp (PWI) but I'm not sure what that means. Of the lot, I like the Hypex UDC180 module as it seems to be the better choice for my application. 41hz's AMP-1 would be a good choice as well but the reviews seem to suggest that the UDC180 sounds better. I'm very low on the learning curve with these amps - D Class, T Class, Gainclone, etc. There's alot a good info over at DIYAudio.com but some of those threads are more like books than discussions. Have fun -Bryan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik Mandaville Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 In reference to the following comments: "Did you find yourself surprised at the quality of sound coming out of this little beast?" "On an absolute scale not really." To begin with, I have to say that this coffee is way too strong! I like strong coffee, but this is just plain We got home from IKEA and grocery shopping yesterday at about 1:00, and I installed the Teac in my 'audio rack' ($25, also from IKEA) just below the Lexicon processor. What was also a refreshing change, was that I was able to use the skinny little interconnects that came with the amp, as opposed to the much heavier ones I have that grab onto the jacks as if their very lives depended on it. The stock cables fit the Lexicon very nicely and smoothly, without that potentially damaging 'grab' that can destroy a ground connection inside a component. This little amp seemed so excellently suited to the Lexicon. I've had amps, including the Moth and Transcendent SE OTL that, while great amps on their own in a conventional 2-channel setup, just didn't seem to integrate as well as the Moondogs, the Hori, the $25 transistor amp I mentioned last week, or the Teac. The first thing I noticed about this amp was how clean the output sounded when balancing the 3 channels (L/R K-horns with center LS). It was very smooth, and very clear. That done, I did my usual ear-up-against-the squawker-test to listen for residual noise, which in this case was completely absent of even the slightest buzz or hum. The $25 was quiet too, but not like the Teac. I also found that I could pick up a couple of local radio stations with the $25 transistor amp -- this was during idle, with no music playing. The Teac has much better shielding, and is housed in a much better chassis. That fact may have had something to do with this. Ok, here I go. Shawn, if you'll allow me roughly paraphrase something you mentioned, I must agree that the Teac not only sounds good for the money, it sounds good, period. It provides about twice the output of the $25 black box, but does so in a very elegant way. 'Elegant' is kind of an ambiguous term, I admit, and what I mean by that is that it has the ability to play both loudly and to our ears extremely cleanly -- I mean with really very surprising clarity. Moreover, where the little transistor amp (at just about 1/4 the cost of the Teac)had an upward tilt in its frequency response, as well as a very slight glare or edge, we found the Teac both richer and rounder by an important margin. The last of many CDs we listened to last night was Pat Metheny's 'One Quiet Night.' If you like solo acoustic guitar and you have not heard this album, I recommend it! It is a very well-recorded album, and the Teac was both musical and highly resolving -- in fact to where we could hear the texture of the tips of his fingers on the strings. With all three channels balanced and amplified by a common source, music had such an incredibly tactile sort of quality. The transistor amp was good, too, but surely did not have the roundness of tone and palpable bass response of the Teac. We were very, very impressed with it. When we get ours, I plan not a single change to it in terms of Black Gate capacitors in the power supply or anything else. Having seen the parts quality in pictures Shawn forwarded to me, they are already quite good. Due to some very unfortunate circumstances for the person from whom we purchased our Heresys, we have not yet received them. However, they should be here by probably the end of next week, and I am looking very forward to putting them into the system, powered by my Horus amps, as the side channel loudspeakers. We absolutely also want to invest in either the parts and materials for a DIY subwoofer, or one already built, but that is going to have to wait for a bit for a number of reasons. I have to say, Shawn (and this is very probably the result of my usual take on amplifiers I have recently built and listened to) that the Teac competes very strongly with the very best amplifiers I have ever heard. Dee: You have a PM or email or both! Marie wrote you yesterday afternoon, but the message somehow went 'poof' and vanished. Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coda Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 Teac AL700P "All Battery" Modification I am reminded of a Gizmo article written ~7 years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik Mandaville Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 Thanks Coda: I have always thought batter power was kind of neat, and, like so much of what we have in audio now, has a direct link back to the days of battery powered receiving sets and single horns speakers. I have no doubt that batteries would be quiet. I am just not sure it would be possible to make this thing any quieter! That link describes a 'noisy power supply,' but I just didn't find that to be the case. Right out of the box, and with the think ICs with plastic jacks, the Teac was great. Interesting information, though, and I will like to book mark that for a closer look. Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guy Landau Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 ---------------- On 3/20/2005 9:11:43 AM coda wrote: Teac AL700P "All Battery" Modification I am reminded of a Gizmo article written ~7 years ago. ---------------- Coda, I have Red Wine Audio, modded TEAC in my system and it sound great. I plan to send it to Vinnie again, this week, for the battery mod. We're planning on a modded TEAC roadshow to a few Klipsch forum members, in the near future (using my battery modded unit). I'll keep everyone updated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erik Mandaville Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 sheesh, I need to check my spelling, or slow my typing down -- or both. Guy: What are you finding different in terms of performance from changes that have been made? I could see where larger storage capacitors on the output of the power supply might help provide some better on-demand power, but was there really a significant improvement over the stock version? Thanks, Erik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guy Landau Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 ---------------- On 3/20/2005 10:58:16 AM Erik Mandaville wrote: Guy: What are you finding different in terms of performance from changes that have been made? I could see where larger storage capacitors on the output of the power supply might help provide some better on-demand power, but was there really a significant improvement over the stock version? Thanks, Erik ---------------- Erik, My modded Teac (without battery PS) consisted: Removal of volume pot board Removal of stock RCA jacks Installation of new RCA jacks Installation of input coupling caps (Auricaps) from RCA jacks directly to amplifier board Installation of IEC connector Modifications to Power Supply board Modifications to amplifier board Installation of dampening material to the inside of unit where determined to be needed. It sounds much cleaner and smoother and has a more controlled and defined bass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunnysal Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 Guy, what exactly are the "Modifications to Power Supply board Modifications to amplifier board"? thanks, tony Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guy Landau Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 ---------------- On 3/20/2005 12:20:50 PM sunnysal wrote: Guy, what exactly are the "Modifications to Power Supply board Modifications to amplifier board"? thanks, tony ---------------- Tony, The power supply is redisigned and beefed up and uses a higher quality caps. The amp board uses better quality caps. I don't remember which caps were used by I'll try to remove the cover and check it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sfogg Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 Eric, "When we get ours, I plan not a single change to it in terms of Black Gate capacitors in the power supply or anything else." The main thing I'm planning on doing is just taking the pots out of the signal path. I am curious how much power these can put out with all three (or even four) channels running. With three, whatever it is, it seemed to have plenty of power for my normal useage. If I end up using a Teac (setup for four channels) for the surrounds and the PS is sagging under that load I might see about upgrading that with a higher capacity unit but it might not be needed. I'll keep one unit stock so I can compare back to back any mods I do to the others. Much better comparison then sending a unit away for a few weeks and getting it back and trying to compare against audio memory. There is no 60hz powerline noise in the amp at all so something like a battery supply isn't going to improve that at all. The PS gets chopped up into very high frequency square waves (that don't stay at a constant frequency) so PS noise doesn't get into the audio output in the same manor as it would in a traditional linear amp. BTW, for the discussion about battery power... I use to know a guy online that designed *very* low noise amplifiers for submarine sonar systems. He always mentioned that for the ultimate low noise PS batteries weren't it. Banks of glass capacitors were. Big $$$$ though. Shawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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