Justin & Jerry's Hifi Blog

[Reffc]

Look forward to hearing your impressions Jerry. 35 miles down the road, there's been some changes too

[tubehunter]

Yes, it was a case of form follows function. We don't listen with our eyes.

I enjoyed building it. Did some unorthodox tricks with the power supply on that one.

Duncan

[nat8808]

So -- just peeking out from behind the Jolida DAC on the right is an Amptastic Mini-T.
Let me tell you, the system has regained its old and much loved 'palpable presence' and I am revelling in my music once again.
The wee fella does seem to need a top notch active pre-amp, like my Restek, to give of its best, though. It really brings out the t-amp's best qualities, imo.

Palpable presence is something that gets me going when it happens.. is that the same palpable presence as yours? Can you try to explain what you mean?

For me its an impact to percusive sounds which have fast enough beginings and endings that those sounds could well be in the room with you, somewhere..

As a generalisation, I often feel that to get that you need an especially rigid and fast mid driver (with cones) or well made dome mid or of course those on the MBLs probably move pretty fast due to their design.

Is the Amptastic particularly good or any old T-amp is similar? I've had a Bantam before but not with my Acoustic Energy AE2 Pros which give much more of that palpability..

[nat8808]

What amp modules are in it? (I'm jumping ahead to Jerry singing it's praises and me fancying trying out something similar).

I like the way you took the effort to countersink the bolts too - no lazy allen bolts sticking out all over the place (was that your pre-amp too that someone on hifiwigwam sold - ad where I took the photo from - with the lazy allen bolts sticking out?)

[MartinT]

What amp modules are in it?

I was about to ask the same thing. So I will!

[nat8808]

I was about to ask the same thing. So I will!

Go on then!

Do it! Do it! Do it!

[tubehunter]

A pair of genuine stereo Tripath EB-TA2022 evaluation boards ver 4.0, configured in bridged mode.


http://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/data...th/mXwtryw.pdf

http://g.dubuc.free.fr/pdf/TA2022.pdf

[jandl100]

Palpable presence is something that gets me going when it happens.. is that the same palpable presence as yours? Can you try to explain what you mean?

For me its an impact to percusive sounds which have fast enough beginings and endings that those sounds could well be in the room with you, somewhere..

As a generalisation, I often feel that to get that you need an especially rigid and fast mid driver (with cones) or well made dome mid or of course those on the MBLs probably move pretty fast due to their design.

Is the Amptastic particularly good or any old T-amp is similar? I've had a Bantam before but not with my Acoustic Energy AE2 Pros which give much more of that palpability..

Last question first - It's the Amptastic Mini-T that does it for me. I've heard loads of class D / t-amps - most do not have palpable presence.

Which brings me on to what I mean by pp ....
It's an immediacy, a liveness, a solidity, a ... well, palpability. A feeling of a real instrument in the room making the sounds within a 3D acoustic space. There's a jump-factor, a sense of musical pizzaz.

I guess it's a combination involving transparency, speed, the accurate tracking of low level as well as large scale dynamics.
For me, it's what makes reproduced music really come alive.

Most amps of my experience, regardless of cost, don't have it.
The Mini-T does.
Sadly, I don't think that Amptastic make that model anymore. They are bringing out a new model called the Mini-1.
The good news is that I have a finalised pre-release Mini-1 in my system now.
The even better news is that, based so far on a very small amount of listening (3 minutes so far!) it does indeed have palpable presence at least as good as the Mini-T.

[nat8808]

Cool, that's what makes things real and exciting to listen to for me too and why I always feel there's something missing with some err, "classic" speaker designs people pay lots of money for - they're all sweet and nice and all but lack some 3D reality.

Think I've called it "Tactility" before.. like you could reach out and touch something because the object sounds so solid.

I swapped between my Celestion SL700s and AE2 Pros a few times many months ago and each did their own thing with the SL700s very open, airy and spacious but the AE2s doing the delicious tactility thing even though a little darker. So I've ended up keeping the AE2s in use - all with a rather random integrated by a company called Higher Fildelity from about the 90s about which I can't find any info (not the integrated anyway).

[jandl100]

Yes, it was a case of form follows function. We don't listen with our eyes.

I enjoyed building it. Did some unorthodox tricks with the power supply on that one.

Duncan

What amp modules are in it? (I'm jumping ahead to Jerry singing it's praises and me fancying trying out something similar).

- a very nice, amp, very nice indeed. Powerful, lucid, controlled, articulate. And yes, a good helping of palpable presence.

What's a guy called tubehunter doing making such a fine sounding class D solid state amp?
And I think it looks just fine, Duncan.