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TEAC's TRIPATH Digital Amp ???


Born2RockU

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I was wondering if it is possible to BRIDGE

any two of the TEAC AL700P's three channels .

Does anyone understand the TRIPATH technology enough to know this would be safe?

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Hi,

The Teac actually has two Tripath ampflier boards that are 2-channel boards each. They use both channels of one board, and only 1 channel of the other board (3 channels total).

Regarding bridging (parallel output), there is a way to modify the board to allow the Tripath 2050 chip to run in bridge mode. If fact, if you do this to both boards, you can make a clean 70W x 2 unit. This tweaking requires some very tricky soldering (surface mount), rewiring, etc... but YES, the chip can be ran in "Parallel Operation," which would give you more power.

http://www.tripath.com/downloads/TK2050.pdf

Regards,

Vinnie Rossi

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Well it's more power.. so listening to cannon fire on Telarc's 1812 overture will obviously not clip at super high volumes. From the way I understand the Tripath chips work, bridging wont hurt SQ at all, since they'll decode the same analog channel the same way. But I could be wrong of course.

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On 4/27/2005 9:59:34 PM Erukian wrote:

Well it's more power.. so listening to cannon fire on Telarc's 1812 overture will obviously not clip at super high volumes......

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more power - yes

70 watts NOT clip on the 1812 overture's cannons at "super high volumes" - no

at just "high volumes", i can clip my carver pro ZR1000 tripath based amp that puts out 225 watts per channel on those same cannons

1.gif

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minn, to me at least, if i pass 95-100db then i hit my pain threshold and i get aggrivated within a minute of listening. So to me at least "super loud" is not hearing the cannons blast off at a realistically 150+ dB.

Given that I never listen to music with cannon fire, just mostly rock or classical, for me I dont need 500 watts of overhead per channel. BUT if i were to actually set-up a dedicated home-theater 5.1 system, then i'd definately have at least 300-500 watts a channel for overhead while cutting off my mains at about 90Hz and using the sub for anything under that. So i'd never have to worry about actually hitting the max-avaliable wattage.

But for my music listening tastes (i dont listen to Telarc 1812 on repeat)2.gif it doesnt justify the extra $ for the overhead when 99.9% of the time I never hit it.

-Joe

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Hey Guy,

I never tried bridging the Teac's channels, so I should hold off on commenting on how the TK2050 would sound in parallel operation (single full-bridge) vs. the standard 2-channel operation (dual full-bridge).

The "dual-mono" arrangement that you speak of sounds interesting too! This would use BOTH amplifier boards in the Teac, but only one channel per amp board (ie, the CENTER channel and one of the L/R channels). Even in the stock Teac, one could try this vs. using the L and R channels of the stereo board. Has anyone tried this already? Comments?

I'll also say that the weakest links of the stock Teac are:

1) The switch-mode power supply (not enough power for the peaks, and adds too much grain to the top-end)

2) That crappy volume pot board on the back, including the coupling caps (sounds MUCH better when you install new RCAs and connect them directly to the amp module via a pair of high quality caps such as Auricaps)

3 A few things on the amplifier modules

Regards,

Vinnie

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Vinnie, I have only used my Teac as a dual mono, I guess I should try it the regular way and see what diff. I might hear. Buy the way, my first thoughts on the Teac are. Its not perfect however the differences between the Teac and my 6k tube set amp. are not that much! I should have your modded Teac from Guy L. by the end of the week. I sure wish you would figure out a way to have tos link as well as Digital coax inputs on the DAC9.gif

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Bridging the Tripath amp gives you 2x the current capability, but the same Voltage capability. So, into the same speaker, the power is not likely to increase at all except at frequencies where the speaker impedance is very low.

To get twice the Voltage the unit would require two completely seperate floating supplies (one for each channel) .. and even then I have serious doubts about the feasibility.

Leo

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Craig,

He designed his own long before it was popular, so I'd take his word on this.

Regarding the dual mono- I have mine hooked up that way. Seemed to make more sense than just leaving a board sitting there and running both channels off one board. I've left it ever since, so I have no baseline for comparison.

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Born2RockU,

No, I'm familiar with the technology and have reviewed the applicable Tripath data sheets.

Leo

Further thoughts:

It is possible that Teac provides for increased power supply voltage for bridged mode operation. In this case, the full increase in power would be possible. I haven't re-checked the voltage limit of the output module (Teac uses a 2-module chipset offered by Tripath). My comments here are more a word of caution in that bridging is a fair amount of work and if the power supply voltage really doesn't change it won't accomplish much, if anything.

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On 4/28/2005 10:01:53 AM sunnysal wrote:

leo was MAKING tripath chip based amps before TEAC ever heard of tripath...he knows the subject. tony

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Tony,

With all due respect, to you and to Leo, I would suspect that a company like TEAC is working on things long before they ever come to market with a product. Large ships turn slowly. They have the resources, but the little guys can move faster.

Marvel

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Ben...so you have which two channels bridged :

~ Left w/ Center

~ Right w/ Center

~ Left w/ Right

...and is the bridged-channel a massive improvement ?

Can you possible describe the difference between the MONO bridged-channels

and the lonely remaining channel?

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All,

Looking at the datasheet, it looks like when running paralleled ouput with Vcc = 30V, and driving a 4-ohm load, you'll get a continuous 75W at less than 0.01% THD+N. They don't specify what this will be using an 8-ohm load in this configuration.

Also, they don't spec standard stereo operation using an 4-ohm load, but leaving Vcc = 30V, and driving an 8-ohm load, they spec a continuous 35W at less than 0.01% THD+N. I wonder if the spec would match that above if a 4-ohm load was used? I suppose it won't because as Leo mentioned, it is an issue of getting more current (which the paralleled mode gives you).

Whenever power ratings are applied, it is always good to know what load is being used, as well as the distortion level. At 10% THD, this amp has a lot of power ;-).

In the end...what's more important than the rated watts is how it sounds. I'm sure we all can agree on that!

Regards,

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On 4/28/2005 10:52:58 AM leok wrote:

Further thoughts:

It is possible that Teac provides for increased power supply voltage for bridged mode operation. In this case, the full increase in power would be possible. I haven't re-checked the voltage limit of the output module (Teac uses a 2-module chipset offered by Tripath). My comments here are more a word of caution in that bridging is a fair amount of work and if the power supply voltage really doesn't change it won't accomplish much, if anything.

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Leo,

It looks like the TP2050 chip can run up to 36V (recommended max), with an absolute max rating of 40V. I don't think this limit changes if the mode of operation changes...at least they don't specify it.

Regards,

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