Comparing Class T Amps

[Ali Tait]

I will haul the valves out and have a go when I get a chance.

[Clive]

In my case it's made the T-amp sound better rather than the valve sound better.....

[Ali Tait]

I'll see if I notice any difference.

[Katch]

Just thought I'd join and say my Arjen Helder TA2020 MKIII T-Amp driving a pair of Eltax Monitor IIIs really does a good job.

I mainly use it for nearfeild but it performs equally well in a small room. Soundstage is broad and very well defined. Bass is a little boomy but I really do mean a little bit - I think it could be tightened up by changing some caps out.

Overall this setup brings out details in music that I usually associate with headphone monitoring and it is remarkably easy to listen to for extened periods of time. If you were to blind test it vs my much more expensive B&W / Marantz setup you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference at casual listening levels in a small room. In fact only that slight lack of tightness in the bass would give it away.

Arjen's boards are a really nice option when looking at T-Amps and he's just started selling the MKI prebuilt and ready to go for a little over £130 delivered. Comes fully remote controlled with optional bluetooth module - nice little setup.

[Clive]

I must admit to wondering about changing the 2.2uF input capacitors too.

[Ali Tait]

I don't it's possible at the moment to beat a decent switching amp in the SPPV stakes, the quality on offer is amazing given the cost.

[John]

I altered the phase to adjust from the Bantam inverted phase, I had to cut back on the bass a bit as it was now being a bit to over powering, other differences are subtle in my system. I not touched phase on the sub amp.

[Clive]

Inverting phase between bass and mid can help sometimes when there's too much overlap but keeping the same phase should be more ideal with fewer side effects. In my case it seems to have mattered that I had bass and mid out of phase.

[Katch]

I must admit to wondering about changing the 2.2uF input capacitors too.

Been searching for this for a while and finally found it again;



He's uprated the buffer cap to 10000uf from 6800uf and swapped out the input caps for 250v 5.6uf @ 1% from the original 400v 2.2uf @ 3% caps.

I've tried to find those Dayton caps before but they don't seem to be available in Europe - best I could find are the Mundorf polyprops.

[Clive]

Been searching for this for a while and finally found it again;



He's uprated the buffer cap to 10000uf from 6800uf and swapped out the input caps for 250v 5.6uf @ 1% from the original 400v 2.2uf @ 3% caps.

I've tried to find those Dayton caps before but they don't seem to be available in Europe - best I could find are the Mundorf polyprops.

I see the pic, though I had to log into diyaudio

Is that the latest version or a special tweak? Good 5.6uF polyprops will cost several times the price of the amp!