T-amp (Off Topic)
Hi Bert and other folks.
Great that you bring it up.
I am running a T-AMP as main-amp, since roughly 4 months now.
To make a long story short. I havn't heard a better AMP in my chain yet!
(Though it needs some tweaks!)
I was running ICE-Power before. These are driving my subwoofers now.
The way I went:
I bought the Charlize version, which is far better than the standard T-amp
and some other modules which are available.
80$ is a real fair price for the delivered quality and quality parts on the board I'd say. And it is more or less plug and play. I like the combination of smd and standard parts a lot - makes tweaking at the right spots much easier.
Still, not very much survived on the original board:
I replaced all caps with Blackgate NonPolars. And very important changed the input caps to Mundorf Silver/Gold.
Charlize is using Air-Coils in the output. Which is OK.
I replaced it with Mundorf AirCoils which is better. Lower level detail
increases a lot. The Mundorf coils are getting the vibrations down to an absolute minimum. (Explanations can be found on the Mundorf homepage)
Power is again a Nortstar NSB 90 Battery buffered with BlackGates NP. Dynamics and transients are just great. Smaller batteries (and most probably other brands) will always be a compromise and no option for a non-compromise system.
All cabling/wiring is Vooddoo silver solid core.
And one of the key issues: I glued a Shakti-Online to the back of the Tripath chip. Noise is gone! Lower level details again improved a lot.
This amp plays just great.
I had a Tube-"Maniac" at home the other day.
He was nothing less than shocked!
I got him my spare-amp for testing.
I love this little amp. With all the mods I applied and the battery
you are ending up at roughly 400-500€ (200€ for the Battery only!) in parts for the stereo setup.
The amp is quite load sensitive and with 5-6W on 8R not very powerful. On 8R or higher you really should have a very sensitive system above 98db to play at a decent volume. Distortion increases quickly on higher volumes.
Here a tube shows nicer/smoother sound if you run it into its limits.
Consider that you also need to have a different filter for different loads in the output. Standard is usually the 4R setup. You have to lower some caps here. That'll change/adapt the roll-off in the upper range.
My summary. This amp is a great amp. If tweaked a bit it does everything right.
On my wishlist would be a differential input and 5 more Watts to get some headroom on live volume levels - to name the small disadvantages I see.
Klaus
Complete thread:
- T-amp - Bert, 2006-10-05, 20:33
- T-amp - Ivo, 2006-10-06, 04:20
- T-amp - James D, 2006-10-06, 07:53
- T-amp - giulio, 2006-10-06, 12:34
- T-amp - soundcheck, 2006-10-06, 12:46
- T-amp - ffd, 2006-10-06, 13:06
- GC - HighEnd? - Bert, 2006-10-06, 13:37
- GC - HighEnd? - PeterSt., 2006-10-06, 23:19
- GC - HighEnd? - Bert, 2006-10-06, 23:39
- GC - HighEnd? - PeterSt., 2006-10-07, 09:59
- GC - HighEnd? - Bert, 2006-10-06, 23:39
- GC - HighEnd? - PeterSt., 2006-10-07, 10:12
- GC - HighEnd? - werner, 2006-10-07, 11:00
- GC - HighEnd? - PeterSt., 2006-10-07, 12:08
- GC - HighEnd? - werner, 2006-10-07, 11:00
- GC - HighEnd? - PeterSt., 2006-10-06, 23:19
- T-amp - soundcheck, 2006-10-06, 14:55
- T-amp - ffd, 2006-10-08, 15:22
- GC - HighEnd? - Bert, 2006-10-06, 13:37
- T-amp - Bert, 2006-10-06, 13:29
- T-amp - Phil Townsend, 2006-10-08, 23:55
- T-amp - soundcheck, 2006-10-09, 10:15
- T-amp - ffd, 2006-10-06, 13:06
- T-amp - PeterSt., 2006-10-06, 23:08
- T-amp - PeterSt., 2007-01-09, 12:15