Panelhead

I plan on rerunning analysis on my current amp. Noise floor on My_Ref Evo Rev A does not quite match AHB2. But slaughters most of the expensive amps I have seen tested in Stereophile. Many have a baseline and power supply artifacts 20 dB higher. Since changing to high efficiency horns I am using a similar design with much lower gain. Hope to get test setup running soon. Plus want to test at 10 mW, 100 mW, and 1 watt. With 105 dB 3 way horns and an active sub, 100 mW is very loud. The 5 and 18 watt output RTA plots are not representative of normal operation. You can build your own.

This is a measurement performed with an AP analyzer on my amp. It is dead quiet connected to 105 dB efficient Klipsch La Scala II speakers. Noise.pdf

You can try a Corning fiber USB cable. I am using their Thunderbolt cable for the isolation offered.

Are thes prices shown in Hong Kong dollars?

Have you listened to high quality solid state amplification long term? You may just prefer the sound of tubes. The tube gear has more even order distortion. Makes it sound warmer and puts meat on the sound.

I have no recent experience. I had an office in Denver and would schedule trips to allow attending RMAF. About 10 years ago I got to where there was not much of interest there. Have not attended any shows since. But the reports are discouraging. I am glad there are people who do not mind dropping 10k on a phono cartridge, 20k for a tonearm, and 50K for a table. Or 20K for amplifier and 3 - 5k on a dac. I am too cheap for this. Would experience serious buyers remorse.

That was how RMAF was when it began. Lots of high value gear for people to hear and see. Pricing just escalated.

I am lost on this. I think Apple with add the M2 memory soon. The EVO 970 sticks have read speed rating of 3500 MB/sec. The write is around 2500. Smokes the 2.5” SSD. Built a NUC with these, but been concerned how fragile the Hackintosh is. People with them are constantly changing the settings to address OS updates. Just have Windows 10 on it for now. I think I would replace my late 2012 Mini with a new model Mini if it was able to use the latest chips and drives.

My wife would move out if I bought a couple of these Fifth Elements.

I power mine, NUC8, with a iFi iPower Plus. 15 volts and 4 amps. I have a 500GB Evo 970 M2 and a 500GB Evo 860 2.5” SSD installed. And 16 GB of RAM. The 4 amp supply runs everything with ease. No sure if 12 volt, 15 volt, or 19 volt makes any difference. The iPower Plus was 70.00 which seems reasonable. Very I believe a good switcher is better than a good LPS. The Plus seemed like a no brainer.

How many channels do you need? One of the reasons I use my Clarett 4Pre is it can be configured for 4 channel balanced out. Has a single knob. There are other good reasons, but Hooking up active subs is a goal. Four channel dacs are just not very popular.

Give him his 2500.00. Some people can never figure out what they want. It is tough dealing with them. Sell to strangers, make sure the deal is “as is” so no buyers remorse sets in. Keeping the 2500 is not right. If I was your friend I would say to go ahead and deliver my paid for equipment.

The routing could be a piece of cake. You can use a FPGA to perform the signal routing. One stereo balanced LDR and buffer circuit. The FPGA can assign the selected inputs and output. My current interface does this. But is the normal opposite. Eight stereo selectable inputs and two stereo outputs. But could be programmed for five outputs. Mine allows four channel in and four channel output for running stereo main speakers and subs. This is main reason it is used. One pot that allows one knob level control operation. Plus two stereo balanced headphone circuits with separate level control. A diy person could cobble this together with 500.00 in parts. Plus labor and programming. I think 2,000.00 should cover. Many diy’ers can program a FPGA.

I am running a late 2012 i5 with 16 Gb of 1600Mhz ram. Plus big SSD. Use a Corning optical to connect to TB Dax. Purchased a NUC to hack. 16 Gb of 2400 MHz ram. Running 500 gb M2 Evo 970 and 500 gb of Evo 860 SSD. But not sure even with TB3 to TB2 adapter optical cable will work. Also the WiFi will not work with MAC OS. Should I install MAC and hacks? The M2 SSD is 6 times faster than any 2.5” SSD. Read all the directions to make a Hackintosh, looks simple. But updates to OS can stall them.

Cannot see the secondary windings on the EI transformer. The toroid has dual secondaries. May not be compatible. For many applications the limited bandwidth of an EI transformer is better. The noise is filtered out. The picture shows a 70 volt line transformer.