Justin & Jerry's Hifi Blog

[jandl100]

Thanks Jez - that looks fab.

Is it going to have an Arkless Electronics sticker on it?

[Arkless Electronics]

Thanks Jez - that looks fab.

Is it going to have an Arkless Electronics sticker on it?

Oh go on then... I stopped short of even labelling in and out as I'd gone so much over the "labour budget"... It will have to be on a white background on the back as I can't deal with printing on black...

It's a good illustration of what the likes of me are up against when you look at that little power amp you bought..., looks very attractive and all that... £10 delivered? It cost me £20 JUST FOR THE PARTS for this! They are all top quality parts of course though (the electrolytics for example are high temperature, long life, low ESR )... and a pretty "high end" circuit design.. kept down to a price with shite case and el cheapo SMPS wall wart.

I haven't actually listened to it yet! I'll report back on that

[Firebottle]

Your 'cheapo SMPS wall wart' looks similar to ones I use Jez, they are pretty good in my book

[Arkless Electronics]

Your 'cheapo SMPS wall wart' looks similar to ones I use Jez, they are pretty good in my book

"Powerpax" UK designed and Chinese built I believe. Yes I was very pleasantly surprised by its performance. Ripple about 40mV. Expected another 0 on there! Bit of R and C and it's battered flat. Jobs a gud 'n

[Arkless Electronics]

After some issues which were not the fault of the buffer I'm now listening to it (prototype class A power amp temporarily fitted with very fast bipolar op amp didn't like not seeing the resistance of the passive pot... which by coincidence was just right for the input bias current and was giving about 100mV offset.... which went up to 3V without the passive! Went back to FET input op amp in power amp and all's well).

You could well be on to something here Jerry! First impressions are very favourable It's hard to describe but it's as if the detail is more natural and less forced, everything sounds rather more organic without any softness spoiling it and sound staging is deeper without having to "try" to hear that far back into the stage.... Sounding like 6 moons here but I suppose more musical and less obviously hi fi but without loss of detail etc. It's driving about 4 meter interconnects here BTW.

[Macca]

So a bit like some mild tape saturation then?

[Macca]

BTW Jez have done a screen shot of you doing your Roy Gregory just in case you have second thoughts and delete it

[Arkless Electronics]

So a bit like some mild tape saturation then?

There's no saturation or distortion going on as in a R2R.... it's a "straight wire with(out) gain... but kind of yeah... For fairness I should say I haven't listened to my system for about 4 days before this and audio memory is notoriously inaccurate. If encourages turning up of volume due to the lack of any "chrome plated-ness", "glare", "grain" I would say, but without any loss of solidity, detail etc. First impressions are it's giving some of the stuff I was looking for in new power amps I've been messing with!

[Arkless Electronics]

BTW Jez have done a screen shot of you doing your Roy Gregory just in case you have second thoughts and delete it

[Arkless Electronics]

I've been using Marvin Gaye "What's going on?" as a test album a lot recently. The answer is there's actually loads going on! Layers of studio generated depth with different things happening at different depths. The Radford STA25 MkIII I had in did wondrous things with these "layers of detail" that non of my SS amps could quite do but with this in line it all seems to be there with the SS amp!

Very interesting and needs some more investigation