...or get a black one and name it "Black Beauty" after the Green Hornet and Kato's car.

please reserve a Hornet Portable Headphone Amp for me. black with white or gold lettering, whatever is availale. $295 is a done deal. Tell me when and where to order The Hornet. Also PM'd you.

Ken Gray

Heh, black with gold please!

i guess this is what i get for working late for a whole week, last place in the list for my dream portable amp. just tell me when and where and the cheque is in the mail. standard black, puh-leez.

::eagerly waiting::

-james

Quote:



You're not last! 100 amps is alot.

It is indeed so sad to see & read some threads on head-fi that have been diverted from the main subject to become so bitter to attack a new product that is yet to be available to the public, sadly to say a headfier whom I valued as friend & trusted him & gave him all the respect turns to be so ungreatful.
I have no fear of having any of my components pictured or examined by any person at any time, as all of you know that I personally take the covers of of my components in the meets to expose the insides to every one there. I have nothing to hide. My designes are not a gift from heaven, I do not beleive in complex configuration, I believe what makes an amp a great amp is when a "FEW" high quality components are used in a simple manner that make that amp shine. Using many components in an amp does not make it a better sounding amp. I believe in now a days op-amps, they are great in sound quality, they have precision laser trimed resistors & are well balanced in the quality of sound, signal to noise, dynamics & the bandwith that they operate with. I have been under fire for a long time since I started making headphones to this comunity. I have never decieved any headfier, I have never sold any upgrade but gave them for free, I have never lied to any about my products & I shared my thought in every meet with who ever comes in contact with me answering their question with atmost respect no matter how silly they might be.
When the need for smaller portable amp, with chargeable capability & gain adjust was asked of me, I went on the search to find out what was available in the field of op-amps that I can request as a sample before I commit my self to any. Now my question to any one out there, who knows little or a lot, wheather is a do it yourself, designer or even an EE, If you are building a headphone amp you will need two things, STAGES, to do the job for you, the first is the input stage, called the gain stage where you decide how much you want to amplify your signal, that by itself is not powerfull enough to drive heavy loads & could very easily collaps under heavy load & distort. You need stage # 2 which is the driver stage or we called it the buffer stage, this stage is capable to take your gain & puts guts behind it to drive the load. many examples of this configuration in the portable amps are, the SR-71, XP-7 Portaphile, Xin amps & many many more, this is been done million times, before & will be done many times more after we are gone.
Now what will happen when a certain manufacturers of op-amps, like Analog Devices, Burr Brown & Linier Technology, to mention some, come with an outstanding op-amp that containes both the gain & the buffer in one chip?
I found that yesterday when a very respected head-fier pmed me the Cmoy design of the headphone amp, I have heard a lot about Cmoy but I have never come accross listening to one or seeing one or looking at the schematics of one. When I checked the Cmoy schematic I found that it used TWO chips, OPA134, one does the left channel, which containes the gain & buffer in one chip, & the other chip does the other channel. There are capacitors in the input section & resistor as an option at the output section which the respected designer implemented.
The Hornet is NOT Cmoy, The Hornet is ONLY ONE chip that I found which was so musical that made my jaw drop, it does both channels left & right, having both the gain stage & buffer stage in on tiny little chip, but that was not it, the driving capability of this tiny chip made me go nuts it had guts to drive the unthinkable loads. The more I listen to it the more I loved it. So I decided to use it in the Hornet, WHY NOT? no lanes, the shortest possible signal paths. So did I.
NOW we come to my most important question directed to those who know electronics, to the DIY friends & to the EE out there, IF you have an 8 pins
chip, 2 of which are used for power, +&- voltages, this means there are only 6 pins left on that chip, pins 1, 2 & 3 are for one channel, as pin 1 is the output 2 is the inverted input & three is the none inverted input. The other channel is pin 5 as none inverted 6 as inverted input & pin 7 as output.
These pins are universal as they match with all the other previouse chips, pin for pin. So each channel has two inputs & one output all in one chip.
Lets give this chip to any designer & request the most SIMPLE schematic using only this chip to build a headphone amp. Lets say we have 10 designers doing the same chip. Do you know that all 10 of them are going to draw the same schematic for that chip, infact they will all be IDENTICAL as there is only one way of using that chip, either using the invertes input as the input & tie the other input to the gound & use feed back from the output to the inverted input. OR use the none inveted input as an input & tie the output to the inverted input to a resistor to the gound to get the gain required. Does that mean that these EE stole the design from some one? the answer is NO, it is the only way it has to be done & no other way. If you want you car to drive, there is only one way driving it, turn the engine shift the gear ONLY, no other way.
Has this design been done before the Hornet, Only million times. in fact the same schematic of the Hornes is used by the same chip to drive motors, solenoid & other components. Was the schematic any different? the answer is NO as there is NO other way to do it but one way.
So why am I crossified by headfiers who are accusing me of steeling some respected designers work? Who is behind this accusation & why?
I will never lie to my friends who put their trust in me.
Ray Samuels

I would also like to put myself on the list, if this thread is indeed the list.

Sorry to hear there is a bunch of drama going on.

Hi Ray, please put me on the list for a Hornet @ $295 as well! I'll have hard time choosing between red and dark silver...

Sounds like a great amp--both minuscule and powerful! Put me on the list @ $295.

Hi Ray. Dark Silver for me please.

Take no notice of the idiots.

Hi Ray. One for me. Black and white lettering. Thanks.

Black with gold lettering on mine please!

Ray I got your back on this one. I used to own a Cmoy with a 2134 chip in it, and although MisterX did a superb job with that Cmoy, none of my sonic recollections of it compare to what I heard out of your Hornet. Your Hornet just blew tons of amps out of the water at the NYC meet (I even liked it more than the beefy M3 hehe!) and I can tell you that as much as I liked the Cmoy for what it was, it never had a chance to rival any of the amps I've heard since, including all the other portables like the V2 and the Supermacro, etc etc. Therefore, if I had the cash I'd unreservedly pick your amp up in a second!

Ray, don't let the negativity of a few get you down. There are some highly insecure and immature people out there that feel the need to defend their own purchase decisions by heaping scorn on all others.

In my experience, these types simply end up reaping what they sow.

You've worked hard to put yet another great product out to the community, like so many other designers. It's the competition between great products that keeps increasing the quality for all. So keep your chin up, Ray, and ignore the ignorant. You -- and all the other talented amp designers -- bring so much happiness to the majority of the community. You should be very proud of your achievements.

Counting the days to the official sign-up, Ray ... counting the days.

Brian

Ray,

"Pay no attention to the morons behind the keyboard". Everyone is well aware of the value of such opinions. You can put me down for a hornet to go along with my SR-71 and Stealth. Thanks for making this community richer.